


Hopes and Uncertainties

by Loreak



Category: La casa de papel | Money Heist (TV)
Genre: Countdown, F/M, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 24,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23245531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loreak/pseuds/Loreak
Summary: What if inspectora Murillo had managed to arrest the professor and sent him to prison?Spain, 2017.The heist at the Royal Mint is still going on. Raquel has just found out that the first and only person she has felt a deep connection to in years is the mastermind behind the very crime that’s about to ruin her career. Angry at the betrayal, she is planning revenge. And she won’t stop until the professor is behind bars.
Relationships: Raquel Murillo/Professor | Sergio Marquina
Comments: 49
Kudos: 201





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> To make the wait for Part 4 of LCDP a little less agonizing I have decided to write this little alternative universe fan fiction. I will try to update every day in the afternoon (European Time). 
> 
> Have fun reading, leave Kudos and a comment, if you like, but most importantly, stay safe and stay home. 
> 
> xxx

_6 days into the heist_

Raquel had been watching the surveillance camera material for the past hour. So far, nothing. Salva – or Sergio, or the professor, or however he called himself – had seemed to vanish since he managed to escape from the house in Toledo a few hours ago. Raquel was full of rage. The one time she actually liked somebody and let down her walls, the guy turned out to be the most wanted criminal of Spain. Her thirst for revenge had immediately taken the best of her – which was why she had gone through Ángel’s personal belongings in the hospital and taken his police badge. Why she decided to canvass the area around Hanoi to acquire the surveillance footage of the night they had dinner together. The night they first slept together … No, she couldn’t think about that now. She needed to concentrate. She needed to find and arrest him in order to maintain her dignity and redeem herself within the police. How she had descended from the inspectora to a suspect in the span of a few hours was a riddle to her.

From the hallway, Raquel could hear her mother hum the melody of a Spanish telenovela she had been watching. The noise became louder and a second later, Mariví gently pushed the door open, holding another cup of ColaCao that she proceeded to set down on the desk in front of Raquel.

“Cariño, you’re working too much, why don’t you come on a walk with me and enjoy the sun for a bit.”

“Mamá, I don’t have time for that now”, Raquel replied without taking her eyes from the computer screen. She had set the video player to time lapse mode and couldn’t allow herself to miss even a second.

“This is simply not going fast enough”, she mumbled to herself.

“What are you looking for?”, asked Mariví while leaning over Raquel’s shoulder.

“I’m looking for Salva, Mamá”, Raquel said absent-mindedly. She didn’t have time for explanations right now.

“Why don’t you just call him?” Mariví drew out the phone she had secured at her belt and held it out to Raquel. “I think that would be much faster than looking for him on these video tapes.”

Raquel paused the video and was about to explain to her why she couldn’t just call him but then she stopped. She suddenly had an idea. Would he fall for it? Probably not … But still, it could be worth a try.

She turned to her mother with a frown on her face.

“Mamá, could you maybe call him for me?”, Raquel asked. “You used to be in a theatre group, right?”

A faint smile grew on Sergio’s face. They had just broken through the tunnel and soon all of them would be getting out of there. They had needed to start the escape plan sooner than Sergio had originally anticipated. Earlier, things had almost run out of hand but now they were back on track. They had the money and they had the escape route, now Sergio simply needed to give a few altered instructions to the Serbians who had just arrived at the hangar and then he would be headed to see the inside of the mint with his own eyes. As he began to elaborate on the next steps the ringing of a telephone made him stop. For a second he thought it was the phone connecting him to the investigation tent and his heart made a leap. Then he remembered Raquel wouldn’t be on the other line of it. She was being investigated against, she was a suspect herself now. The thought of it made him squirm in pain. He sighed. This was not the time for feelings, especially Raquel-related feelings. For the moment, if ever, he couldn’t change what had happened so he needed to get her out of his mind if he wanted to finish this.

It was his cell phone that was ringing. He recognized the digits immediately: It was Raquel’s house number. Before his brain could tell him otherwise his finger pressed the green button as if in a trance. He brought the phone to his ear.

“Hello? This is Mariví, the mother of Raquel Murillo. I... I have a problem. My daughter is missing and I didn’t know who to call and since you are friends with her I thought maybe you knew where she is.”

Sergio hesitated. He needed to take care of the escape. Yet, something stopped him from hanging up the phone and he kept listening.

“Please, she left a few hours ago to get Paula. She was with her father although he isn’t allowed to be with her but I forgot…”, Mariví was panting. “You know... I am always so forgetful these days. And now she won’t return ... and I can’t reach her on her phone…”

Of course she couldn’t reach her on her phone, Sergio had taken that with him. The old lady was clearly panicking. His chest grew tight when he thought of that sweet woman worrying about her daughter. And Raquel with Alberto? Sergio didn’t like imagining that scenario at all, especially under these circumstances. But the plan, his perfect plan! Sergio took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He slowly began to wonder if his plan had really ever been as perfect as he had thought it to be. No matter how this ended, even if they all managed to escape, he would still lose.

Sergio didn’t quite understand what made him say the following words. “Can you give me the address?”

Raquel was early to show at the location that her mother had given the professor over the phone. As he seemed to know all sorts of things about Raquel and her family, she hadn’t been wanting to take any chances so she had directed him to the actual street that Alberto lived in in order to not raise any suspicion. If he even came. According to her mother he had immediately hung up the phone after she had given him the address. He might as well have decided that she simply wasn’t worth it. Still, if any of the things he had said to her earlier in the house in Toledo were true, there was a small chance that he might show.

Once again, Raquel checked for the pistol that was placed under her leather jacket. This time, she wouldn’t let him get away, she was sure of it.

The street was completely empty. In this part of the city people came to live, not to shop or anything else, and at this time of the day, most people were still at work. In the distance Raquel could see a motor bike approaching and she quickly retreated into the shielding darkness of an alley between two houses. As the motor bike came nearer she was almost sure it was him. He stopped about a hundred meters away from her and took off his helmet. Raquel’s heart began to beat like hell. Why did he come? Did he really care for her? Raquel determinedly shook her head in order to snap out of it. He had only brought bad things into her life. Because of him she was the biggest bitch of the country right now. Because of him she was a suspect in the case she was supposed to solve. Because of him she might lose her job and as a consequence lose the custody battle against Alberto, and thus Paula. Raquel’s chest filled with burning rage. He had disgraced her and she would make sure to make him pay for his acts.

As Sergio got off the bike, Raquel grabbed the phone she had borrowed from her mom and typed in Prieto’s number. It was time to bring in support, even though she didn’t like it.

He picked up before the first ring. “Yes?”

“It’s Raquel Murillo. Send a task force to 53 Calle de Alejandro Villegas. I have him.”

There was a curt silence.

“It’s done.”

Raquel barely awaited the response and ended the call. There was no going back now. She took one final deep breath, grabbed the pistol from her jacket and stepped out of the alley onto the sidewalk. He had his back turned towards her and was marching up to Alberto’s house. Raquel knew, no one would be there, Alberto was still in the investigation tent, playing the hero. Oh, she would show them. The cars that were parked at the side of the street gave her good coverage and Raquel efficiently made her way towards him. She was so close now. It was when he turned around and spotted her that she raised her gun and stepped in front of him.

“Freeze”, she shouted.

He stopped in his tracks and only looked mildly surprised at her appearance. Slowly, he raised both of his arms but then proceeded to take a step towards her.

“You won’t shoot”, he said quietly.

“Are you sure about that?”, Raquel’s voice trembled. “Because I’ve gone for a walk on the countryside. And I’ve had time to think, and I regret not shooting the biggest son of a bitch that I ever met.”

“Raquel…”

“I’m not killing you now, because I want to see you do eighty years in a penitentiary. And there, you get to ask whoever you want what they are wearing.”

He made an ambitious leap for the gun but this time she was prepared. He was strong but she was quicker and so she grabbed both his arms, twisted them around in a fast movement and tackled him to the ground. She proceeded to balance all her body weight in a way so he couldn’t possibly get up. He struggled to get lose from her grip but she firmly kept him down, his face to the ground. With the right hand, she pressed the gun to the back of his head.

“Don’t move”, she whispered and he seemed to realize that he had no chance against her now. In a quick movement, Raquel had taken out hand cuffs and proceeded to shackle his hands together. Only as she read him his rights and the adrenaline started to fade did a feeling of satisfaction overcome her.

Joder! It was a trap. Sergio had realized that as he had walked up to the address Raquel’s mother had given him and noticed that the house seemed to be completely vacated. It had been too late by that time. Now his head was being pressed to the ground and Sergio wasn’t capable to move in any way. She was probably using a special police handle to keep him down, because he knew that he would be stronger than her if it solely came down to that. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He couldn’t see her face now but it had been full of hatred when she had pointed the pistol at him. There was so much rage, so much … pain, all directed at him. And he deserved it, he thought. He had done terrible things to her.

“Raquel”, he groaned but she increased the pressure with which she held the gun onto the back of his head.

“Shut up”, she hissed at him. “I don’t want to hear any more lies from you.”

Sergio simply couldn’t comply to that. He got that she was angry at him but the other side hadn’t exactly behaved holy either.

“Why are you still helping them?”, he asked breathlessly. “Weren’t you fired from the case?”

She puffed. “Don’t pretend you’re the good guy here.”

“I haven’t most certainly been the good guy in your story, Raquel, I know that. But don’t you see? We’re part of a system that is bigger than us, that is unjust and only serving the rich and the privileged. It has forced me to do this.”

She let out a wry laugh. “Forced you? You’re telling me you had no other choice than to do all of this? You’re mental!”

“You are just a pawn in their game!”, Sergio replied angrily. “They toss you around as they wish because they can, Raquel, because they can. Because the system allows them to, don’t you understand? You will always get the short end of the stick, yet you’re always coming back to them.”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up”, she cried and there was a short pause where he thought he could hear her sniff. “Don’t you dare to tell me I am part of the problem. Don’t you dare to lecture me on what I should and shouldn’t do. I have my daughter to think about. I am not suddenly going to act in favour of a fucking ideology when my family is dependent on me keeping a clean slate.”

There was a pause where she struggled for air, strained from talking in rage and still holding Sergio to the ground. Sergio didn’t dare to say anything. He had long stopped struggling, as he desperately wanted to convince her of the honest nature of his plan.

“Even if I wanted to”, she started again, her voice shaking. “Even if I thought what you did was right… there’s nothing I can do without ruining my life and the life of my daughter.”

“Raquel, we can still think of a plan, it doesn’t have to end like this”, he tried.

She stayed silent for a second. “It’s too late”, was the flat reply she gave him. “I have already called them.”

Like on command, two police cars appeared at the end of the street, racing towards them in an extremely high tempo. Sergio let his head sink onto the ground. This was it.

He didn’t watch as the police officers got out of the cars and exchanged a few quick facts with Raquel. Then suddenly she took her pistol away from his head and her weight lifted from his body which left him feeling as she’d just taken a piece of him with her. He was pushed against one of the cars and searched properly, then someone opened the door and manoeuvred him inside. The doors closed but he could still see them standing outside as the police officer in charge talked to his superior via the walkie-talkie.

“The suspect in question is arrested. We’ll be there in fifteen”, Sergio could hear him say, even through the closed door. Raquel stood beside him and seemed to look into the void.

“Inspectora”, the officer continued and Sergio could see her snapping out of it. “You’ll have to accompany us to the investigation tent as well.”

“Sure”, she replied. She sounded exhausted. “My car’s parked a block from here”, she explained and turned to leave.

“I’m sorry, inspectora, you don’t understand. There is an arrest warrant for you. I am afraid you’re going to have to come with us. In our car.”

Raquel stopped, her expression incredulous. “What? I just arrested the man responsible for this heist. What do you want from me?”

“I’m sorry, inspectora, order from above.”

Raquel grunted and shook her head. “This is ridiculous! I am going to take my car.”

Before she had properly turned around, the officer grabbed her shoulder and pulled her towards him. Then he got hold of her wrists and his colleague put a pair of handcuffs on her in barely the blink of an eye.

“Please come with us, or we’re going to have to force you”, the other guy said in a calm voice. She only stared at them in disbelieve. Then she complied and followed them to the other police car, not without directing her gaze to Sergio’s window one last time. She looked defeated. The fire she had just confronted him with was gone.

His theory had proven right. He wasn’t happy about that at all.


	2. Chapter 2

“Where is the hangar?”

Sergio didn’t reply. They had brought him to the investigation tent. Prieto and his puppets were gathered around him, trying to get the escape plan out of him. They wouldn’t. Raquel stood a few metres away from them between two police men. She was still handcuffed.

“Tell me where the hangar is, or we’ll make imprisonment really hard on you.”

“You can spare me the threats and negotiations”, Sergio replied in a calm voice. “I am not going to tell you the location. No matter what.”

Prieto turned around in anger. He was running out of time and he had no leverage on this.

As Prieto went past her, Raquel took the opportunity to make herself heard. All of the attention had been on Sergio when they came in. Of course, everything was a matter of seconds now.

“What is going on?”, she asked.

Prieto stopped at her side. “I’ve sent Suárez and the troops into the bank. Looks like they’re going to escape any minute now.”

Raquel took notice of that information without replying to him. Her expression was empty. Sergio couldn’t possibly tell if she was happy about this turn of events or not.

“How did you even manage to find him?”, Prieto asked.

“I let my mother call him and make him believe I was in trouble”, she replied curtly. She probably tried to keep the information on their mutual relationship to a minimum. “He showed up right away”, she quietly added.

“Good job”, Prieto said begrudgingly.

“Yeah, well” Raquel raised her chin. “I don’t see any reason why you would need me to be handcuffed anymore.” They locked gazes for a second but then Prieto shrugged.

“Alright. Take the handcuffs off”, he motioned to his subordinate and Raquel replied with a defiant look.

“But that doesn’t mean we drop all charges”, Prieto added with a harsh voice. “We’re still investigating you due to possible cooperation with the robbers. And you will need to stay here until we’ve taken your statement.”

“Fine”, Raquel replied and took a seat at a nearby table. Prieto went back to his colleagues, probably trying to contact the troops in the bank.

Sergio watched her from his position. She looked tense but probably tried to maintain a strong espression. As she looked around the room their looks crossed for a second. His heart grew tight. What had he done to her? Maybe it was for the best that she had managed to arrest him. This way she would probably get out of this more easily. Sergio could almost hear Andrés’ voice in his head. _Hermanito_ _, you’re sitting in an investigation tent, hands and feet shackled together, possibly about to be imprisoned for life, and yet, you’re thinking about a woman. That’s the passion!_

How often had Andrés told him to just let go, to just let it happen? This time he had given in to love and where had it brought him? Sergio sighed. Where did he go wrong? Why now? Hopefully the others would manage without him. He didn’t know if he could forgive himself if they ended up being captured as well.

Prieto was pacing up towards him once again.

“Give me the location”, he demanded impatiently.

Sergio politely shook his head. “I am sorry, sir, I can’t give you the location. It would ruin the plan.” He held his breath in anticipation of Prieto’s next step.

“Coronel”, a voice from the back of the tent interrupted them and Prieto turned around. “We have registered a call to Raquel Murillo’s phone.”

“Unimportant. Why are you telling me this, the inspectora is here”, he motioned to Raquel.

“I don’t have my phone with me though”, Raquel objected and pointed to Sergio. “He took it from me.”

Now the police officer that had arrested Sergio chimed in. “It wasn’t part of the belongings we’ve collected from him.”

“Coronel”, said the first officer again. “The call we registered to the inspectora came from sub inspector Rubio’s phone.”

All of the involved looked up in surprise.

“Has he woken up?”, Prieto asked with an astonished voice. No one replied. “When was this?”

“Thirty minutes ago, coronel.”

“Why am I only finding out about this now? Send someone to the hospital, immediately. Ask him for the location of the hangar. Now!”

The police men set in motion and Raquel also got up from her chair. “I will come along”, she declared. Of course, she probably wanted to see how Ángel was doing.

“Absolutely not”, Prieto objected. “You will stay here.”

Raquel looked angered but she didn’t protest. Her face grew really dark as she sat back on the chair and stared into the void. She was probably asking herself the same questions as Sergio. Was Ángel really awake? Was he the one who had called her? And, most importantly, would he remember the location of the hangar? If so, Sergio’s plan could collapse within minutes and it would have been all for nothing. He felt drops of sweat running down his temples. His heart felt like it would burst out from his chest any moment now, and yet, there was nothing he could do. He could only hope the others would make it in time. As for him, his destiny was decided. He would probably serve a life-long sentence in jail. He wouldn’t be going to Palawan. He wouldn’t be seeing the other gang members again, and worst of all, he would never see his brother again. His days were counted, and Sergio felt nauseous at the thought of having lost Andrés for ever, even before his actual death.

After having waited for what felt like an eternity, Prieto’s phone rang. He picked it up and Sergio could hear the person on the other line through the speakers in the tent.

“Coronel?”

“Yes?”

“Sub Inspector Rubio has indeed woken up.”

“What does he say? Does he remember the address?”

“I… think so…”, the voice hesitated. “He wants to speak to the inspectora first.”

In the meanwhile, Raquel had gotten up from her chair and approached Prieto.

“Nonsense!”, he said. “This operation is a ticking time bomb and he has demands?”

“Coronel, I don’t think we’re going to get the address in a different way”, came the voice from the speakers.

Prieto turned around and saw Raquel already standing in front of him, holding out her hand for the phone.

“Fine”, he rumbled and handed the mobile to Raquel. “Make it quick.”

Raquel raised her voice. “A bit of privacy?”, she demanded.

Prieto sighed. “Turn down the volume”, he said to the officers in charge of recording the phone calls.

They were probably still going to listen in, thought Sergio. Raquel was in no position to talk freely now, especially since she still wasn’t allowed to leave the investigation tent.

She took a few steps aside, if only to gain the illusion of privacy. Finally, she brought the phone to her ear.

“Ángel?”

Sergio couldn’t hear his answer but apparently he really was on the other side of the line because Raquel suddenly let out a stifled gasp and quickly covered her mouth with her free hand. She seemed so upset. Sergio regretted with every inch of his body that he was somewhat responsible for her friend’s situation.

“How are you?”, asked Raquel and Sergio could hear that she was on the verge of tears.

Oh, how he wished he could hear what Ángel was saying on the end of the line.

“Yes”, Raquel replied to what apparently had been a question. There was a short pause again. “They think I’m cooperating with him.”

Pause. Then she violently shook her head. “No”, was the next thing she said. “I was the one who arrested him.” She bit her lip and her gaze automatically found its way towards Sergio.

He realized what Ángel was doing. He was probably aware that the call was being recorded but he tried to assert the situation. Sergio didn’t have a doubt now that Ángel still remembered the address. But Raquel was his friend, more than that, if it were up to him, and he tried to see if there had been a significant change of the situation. He wouldn’t do anything that would put Raquel in a precarious position.

Prieto grew increasingly impatient for he was walking up and down the small path inside the tent. He approached Raquel and gestured to his watch.

Raquel sighed. She acknowledged him with a curt nod and turned to the phone again. She hesitated for a second before asking: “Do you remember the address of the hangar, Ángel?”

Pause. Everyone in the tent seemed to hold their breath.

“Thanks.”

Raquel hung up the phone and seemed to stare into an empty space. “Alcantara 33”, she repeated.

Sergio’s heart sank.

“Alcantara 33”, Prieto shouted. “All units to this address!”

Suddenly the tent was in uproar. Everyone was moving from one place to the other, shouting orders, repeating the address and getting ready for the cars. The only people standing around without the opportunity to do anything in the face of the drama that had unfolded were Sergio and Raquel. Their looks met from across the room and Sergio couldn’t help but feel the deepest regret about having included her in his plan.

Five minutes later the troops reported back to Prieto. “We’re in the hangar, we’re searching the area.”

Sergio was holding his breath.

“Coronel? The hangar is empty.”


	3. Chapter 3

_One week later_

High-pitched children’s laughter woke Raquel from her sleep.

“Mamá, get up, school’s beginning in an hour”, Raquel heard a giggling voice say before she opened her eyes just in time to see Paula jumping onto her bed and curling up next to her. Raquel quickly closed her eyes again and pulled the duvet even tighter around herself. She wasn’t ready for getting up just yet.

“Mamá, are you awake?”, Paula whispered into her ear and when Raquel opened her eyes again Paula was barely an inch away from her face.

Raquel managed to give her a faint smile. “Good morning, cariño, give me ten minutes, alright?”

“Alright!”, said Paula with emphasis. Then a mischievous smirk appeared on her face. “But just to make sure, I am going to take your blanket with me”, she announced and before Raquel, who was still too sleepy-headed, could react, Paula had snatched the cover and ran out of the room. Raquel was left alone in a cold bed. She groaned in agony and stared at the ceiling. One of these days she would win that staring contest. If it hadn’t been for Paula, Raquel would’ve probably not gotten out of bed even once in the past week. The events of the heist had left her exhausted. After the action went down, she had gone home and taken sick leave. She didn’t want to have anything to do with the police and the heist right now. She didn’t want to talk about, she didn’t even want to think about it. She just wanted to sleep and forget everything that had happened. Looking back at how things had enfolded she shouldn’t feel like this right now. She had managed to arrest the leader of the heist after all. Still, something kept her up at night, kept nagging at her conscience but she didn’t have the emotional capacity to investigate that feeling any further. If she did that, she feared she would split into a million pieces.

“Mamá, can we go to the playground when you pick me up from school later?”, Paula shouted from the hallway.

Raquel winced in distress. “Not today, Paula, maybe another time”, she replied trying to keep her voice steady. “I’m sorry, cariño.”

Raquel stared at the ceiling again. She needed to get up. Just one more minute. One…

“Mamá, hurry up, we have to leave for school.”

As Raquel pulled all her muscle strength together to sit up, Mariví appeared in the doorframe, gesturing her to lay back down again.

“I’ll bring her to school today”, she said.

Raquel made to get up. “No, it’s fine, Mamá…”, she started.

“Don’t argue”, Mariví stopped her and placed a cup of tea on the nightstand. Then she proceeded to cover Raquel with the blanket that Paula had just stolen. “You rest, we’ll be fine.”

Raquel didn’t have the strength to object. The thought of having to get out of the house and possibly be seen by other people, people staring and judging, was enough to make her comply to her mother’s order. “Thank you”, she mumbled while wrapping herself in the duvet again. Mariví lightly patted her shoulder and closed the door on her way out.

“Bye, Mamá”, was the last thing Raquel heard as she hid under the blanket and squeezed her eyes together in an attempt to get just one more hour of sleep, one more hour of not having to think about anything. Then the door slammed shut and the house was still.

Of course, there was no thinking about sleep. She was too riled up. The day after the heist she had visited Ángel in the hospital. To check on him but also to talk. She had thought it would feel good talking to someone who might understand her situation. Sorrys had been spoken and tears had been spilled. Everything that had happened between the two of them during the heist was quickly forgiven. But soon her visit had turned into the opposite. He had asked so many questions, questions that sounded like accusations to her and made her feel uneasy. Questions that she didn’t know how to answer, that made her heart squirm in embarrassment or regret, she didn’t quite know what it was yet. She had left the hospital feeling even more alone than before.

 _Are you in love with him?_ The question haunted her brain ever since Ángel had voiced it. She knew it came from a place of jealousy and bitterness. Of course not, had been her immediate answer. The professor had fooled her and she had rightfully managed to arrest him. But had she been in love with him? Before that? She suspected the answer would give her a clue as to why she had been feeling like shit for the past few days. But finding the answer to it would mean possibly realizing she had made the biggest mistake of her life.

Her phone rang. She rolled around to pick up the mobile that was laying on the night stand. It was Comisario Sanchez. His fifth call in the past two days. Raquel sighed. Sometime, she had to pick up.

“Yes?”

“Raquel, glad to hear your voice”, Sanchez greeted her. “Listen, I know you have taken sick leave but it would be good if we had a talk in my office. Better sooner than later. Maybe today?”

She rubbed her eyes. There was probably no getting out of this.

“Eleven o’ clock?”, she proposed.

“Great, see you later.”

Raquel was left with the beeping of her phone. Now she really had to get up.

Of course Comisario Sanchez wasn’t waiting alone in his office. Coronel Prieto had taken the liberty to join them and now the two of them were sitting opposite Raquel, on the other side of the desk.

“Raquel”, Sanchez started. “Thanks for coming in today on such short notice. The days of the heist were exhausting for all of us and I hope you had the chance to recover a bit.”

Raquel waited for him to go on. He hadn’t ordered her here so he could express his worry for her well-being. Especially not with Prieto at his side.

“Thanks to you, Sergio Marquina is behind bars. We didn’t catch the other thieves but it’s a start. At least something to show the people of Spain our work wasn’t completely useless.”

Now Prieto chimed in. “And most importantly, to show the people of Spain what we’ll do with criminals.” Raquel pursed her lips. He was probably going to get imprisoned for life.

“Right”, Sanchez continued. “Raquel, there are a few things that are inconclusive regarding the last days of the heist, especially the nature of your relationship with Sergio Marquina.”

Raquel stayed still. She had feared this question would come up. She didn’t even know herself what she should think about the nature of her relationship with him.

“Were you at any point cooperating with Sergio Marquina or any other member of the gang?”, Prieto pressed on.

Raquel let out a stifled laugh. “I arrested him.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

“No, I wasn’t”, Raquel replied quietly.

“Then what happened after you found out about his true identity? You didn’t call us right away, we know that.”

How should she respond to that?

“Listen”, Sanchez started again. “We know you drove him to the house in Toledo, a farmer saw the both of you. What happened there, if you didn’t cooperate with him?”

“I really didn’t”, she quickly assured them. “I… was meaning to turn him in…”

“But you didn’t”, Prieto interrupted her. “And why is that?”

Raquel let out a distressed sound. “I was angry, alright?”, she snapped. “I needed to know why he did what he did.”

“Because you completely fell for this guy and the games he played on you. You let your emotions overwhelm you, several times. And several times you endangered this case by doing so.” Prieto seemed content with his conclusion.

Raquel closed her eyes in agony. This was simply humiliating.

“Raquel”, Sanchez started again with a calm voice. “This is not what we call professional and reliable work.”

“I know”, she sighed. “I know. I… I can’t explain it.”

“Is that also why you stole Ángel’s badge and got hold of the surveillance camera before we could? To get revenge yourself?”, Sanchez asked.

Amongst other things, she thought. There was no getting out of this. Her silence served as a quiet confession.

Prieto ran a hand through his beard. “Next time, we shouldn’t let a woman be in charge of an operation like this”, he mumbled to Sanchez, well aware that Raquel could her him. She was about to explode. Why did she even still put up with this sexist bullshit?

“Raquel”, Sanchez quickly chimed in before she could say anything. “It was wrong taking care of this single-handedly. You hindered the operation of this case and that could have truly done some damage.”

Great, she really didn’t want to hear any of this right now. Had she just stayed in bed and ignored the call…

“But”, Sanchez proceeded. “The coronel and I have talked, and as you managed to arrest Marquina in the end the charges against you are going to be dropped. Coronel Prieto will make sure of that himself.”

For some reason, Raquel didn’t feel as relieved about that as she was supposed to be.

“What about my reputation? The CNI vouching for me when I put the life of Alison Parker over the lives of ten hostages?”, she asked.

“I am sorry”, Prieto replied and she immediately knew that he wasn’t. “As I’ve told you, there’s nothing I can do for you regarding that. As for further assignments, we’ll have to see if you can fully recover to your former position as inspectora.”

That felt like a punch in the gut. And once again, Raquel was dependent on the mercy of someone else, of Coronel Prieto, the guy who had managed to destroy her reputation and didn’t give a fuck about changing that. What was important to him was the outside image.

“Raquel, all in all that’s a good thing”, Sanchez said. “It could have looked much worse for you.”

And that was when she realized she didn’t want to spend another second in here again, with these people.

“I quit”, she heard herself say.

The two of them looked at each other in astonishment.

“What?”, Sanchez said hesitantly. ““Are you sure? It’s been a few exhausting days. This case doesn’t necessarily have to ruin your career. Just… take some time to think about it, alright?”

Raquel shook her head as if in a trance. “No”, she said and realized she really meant it. She didn’t want to spend another second working in the police. “I quit”, she repeated, still a bit surprised at this decision herself.

“Well”, Prieto started and got up from his chair. “I think it’s self-explanatory that you maintain silent about everything that has happened. The court case will take place next week and things might still change. As far as I am concerned you also have another, private case ongoing.”

With that warning he turned to the door and left.

An hour later, Raquel found herself in her office, packing up her stuff but mostly throwing things in the trash or filing them away for someone else. Her mind was filled with wandering thoughts. Quitting had been a dangerous decision, she started to realize. Regarding her case with Alberto, her financial security and the outlook of it all to the public. Still, she was sure of it. She didn’t want to spend another day working for dickheads like Prieto who just bossed her around, thinking they could do anything they wanted with her.

“Ah”, she burst out as she crumbled a stack of papers into thick balls and threw them into the trash. This was not how she had imagined her life, not at all.

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. Raquel saw the red-haired visitor from the corners of her eyes.

“Hey”, said Alicia and stopped in the doorframe. “I just heard what happened. Are you okay?”

Great. Raquel had hoped the news wouldn’t spread that fast.

“I’m… still processing”, she responded after a moment while proceeding to pack up things. There wasn’t really much she’d like to say. Alicia and her weren’t exactly friends. They had been quite close during their time in the academy but that was years ago and aside from the occasional lunch dates at the nearest tapas bar they didn’t spent much time together. They didn’t have a lot in common and Raquel had always thought that Alicia somehow managed to find her way as a woman in the police more easily than her. No husband, no kids, just some regularly changing flings. Her bachelor life-style was a way better fit for the job.

“What happened?”, Alicia asked while fixing up her ponytail in the reflection of a mirror.

Raquel sighed and packed up the remaining personal things on her desk into a paper carton. “Actually, I don’t really want to talk about it”, she said curtly. She took one last look around her office, surprised at how few personal belongings had gathered here over the years, and turned to the door but Alicia stepped in her way.

“So that’s it?”, she pressed on. “All the years in the academy, the studies, working your way up to the position as inspectora … and now you just leave?”

Of course she wouldn’t understand.

“I… just can’t do this anymore”, Raquel replied. Even Alicia seemed to realize that her voice trembled a little bit and her features softened.

“Oh, honey, get in here”, she offered and the next second she had wrapped Raquel in a tight hug. Raquel thought she would pass out any second from the strong smell of the perfume that Alicia was wearing. “Don’t hesitate to call if you change your mind and want to talk about it.”

“Thanks”, Raquel mumbled and carefully wormed herself out of the embrace. Alicia probably just wanted to be the first to hear all the gossip. And the lead inspectora quitting her job altogether… well, you couldn’t easily top that.


	4. Chapter 4

Prison was… different. Contrary to his brother and most of the other members of the gang, Sergio had never been here. Of course, he had heard things on how prison was supposed to be. Both in- and outside of fiction and most importantly, most realistically, from his fellow heist companions. But actually being in prison was… different.

The first days, Sergio tried to keep a low profile while not exposing himself as the weak one, the person you could easily blackmail into smuggling drugs or anything like that. His plan didn’t quite work, as everyone was highly interested and fascinated by the man who had managed to keep the Spanish police on their toes for six days. That he didn’t look and act like the average criminal was even more of a mystery to all of them. Surprisingly though, Sergio had managed to refrain from any criminal prison-activities so far, and he was planning on keeping it that way.

His second issue with prisons was the lack of space. He had never been the type of person to be out and about, constantly on the way to new adventures, no, he could enjoy a good book for several hours, sitting alone in the same place. What was bothering him, was the lack of privacy. In the cells, in the corridors, the court, even the showers and bathrooms. He couldn’t get it into his head how most of his fellow inmates weren’t bothered by the intimacy of the arrangements at all. The other day in the communal shower, a prisoner who everyone just knew as Caimán had started a conversation, similar to what Sergio had always imagined as the locker room talk he would never experience and had only heard of from American movies.

“Hey, little mastermind”, Caimán had bellowed. “I heard you and the head inspectora had a thing going?”

Sergio had cringed inwardly. As far as he’d been informed, the press didn’t know for sure what had happened, but people had their suspicions about him and Raquel.

“Did you fuck that bitch? Did you give it to her real’ good?”

Sergio’s hands had started to tremble as he had taken the soap to wash his arms. Just ignore him, he had thought.

The guy had proceeded to corner him. “Hey, I’m talking to you, newbie. Show a little respect!”

“I didn’t… fuck her”, Sergio had answered, inwardly cringing with disgust at the choice of words. Then he had finished showering and left the bathrooms.

Knowing that people talked about Raquel like that made him angry. And it was his fault. Just the memory of her hurt expression when she arrested him was painful. At nights, he often wondered how she was feeling and what she was doing. What she was thinking about him. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much news on her in the press, at least not as far as he could tell because he had limited access.

He was also angry at himself. For bringing Raquel into this, for getting carried away. For making the biggest mistake by following her to that address. Of course it had been a trap, of course. He would pay for that mistake for the rest of his life. Sometimes he was even angry at the fact that he started this whole heist in the first place. Whenever he went about his daily activities in prison, Sergio couldn’t help but carry that anger with him.

What overshadowed everything though, even his wonderings and worries about Raquel, was the death of his brother. He had heard of it on his first day here and as far as he knew he was shot by the operation team while the rest of the gang were escaping. Sergio tried to believe that his death hadn’t been in vain, that he achieved to gain an essential amount of time for the fellow gang members. Thinking anything other than that would surely destroy him. But mourning in prison was hard and Sergio wished there was a way for him to see Andrés one last time, at least to say good-bye. If he was alive he would probably try to get Sergio out of prison. He could not and did not want to count on the others concerning that. In fact, the only consolation was that they had been able to escape. There hadn’t been any news on their location for the past days, so Sergio was quite sure that they had managed to get to the port and that the Serbians had successfully distributed the information on their further travel routes. That was something, at least.

She was late. The day of the hearing, Sergio was anxiously sitting in the court room, wearing a black suit that had been given to him, handcuffed of course, next to him two guards who were accompanying him during the entire day. Sergio wasn’t exactly nervous about the hearing. He knew what his destiny would be and he was sure he had at least 60 years of prison ahead of him, which would very likely be until the end of his life, so today didn’t change much. But every time the doors to the room opened, Sergio had nervously glanced towards the entrance wondering when she would arrive. Then, at exactly 10’o clock, when everyone had already taken their seats, patiently waiting for the hearing to start, the doors had burst open with a loud bang and Raquel came rushing through it.

“Finally, Señora Murillo”, the judge welcomed her. “We’re all waiting for you.”

“Sorry”, she hastened to explain while making her way to the empty seat in front of the room. “The reporters made it hard to pass.”

Sergio watched her while she sat down, took off her coat and quickly adjusted her hair. She looked tired. There were dark circles under her eyes and Sergio thought she somehow didn’t look… like herself. She did, on some level, it was the same professional work suit she was wearing, the long yet neatly coiffed hair, her natural beauty that you couldn’t just un-see. Yet her composure was… off.

While he had been staring at her this entire time she had intentionally avoided to look in his direction. She seemed like she just wanted to get this over with. Sergio’s last hopes of being able to talk to her vanished and his heart sank. How could she still have such an impact on him?

“Whenever you’re ready.” The judge had observed Raquel while she had taken her seat and re-adjusted herself. She nodded but Sergio could see she was still out of breath.

To Sergio, the hearing went about in a haze. The judge read out the facts and charges out loud. Prieto and another guy he didn’t know presented their official statements and Sergio was questioned. He kept his answers short. Just enough to explain his plan and his intents, but not enough to give anything away about the others or their location. Other than that, he had no strategy – he was doomed either way, he knew it.

“Señor Marquina, how was inspectora Raquel Murillo involved in you plan?”

He swallowed. He had seen this question coming but he was still nervous to answer it. His reply would probably have an impact on her professional recovery. His gaze automatically moved to Raquel and for the first time this day she returned his look, her expression full of anxious anticipation. Of course, she had arrested him, she probably thought he would want to make the rest of her life a living hell now. But while looking in her eyes, he once again realized, he wasn’t angry at her at all.

“Señor Marquina, please answer the question.”

Sergio hesitantly averted his gaze from her. “I had always planned to approach her in order to get more information on the current investigation progress. I…”, he wavered. “I hadn’t anticipated to being in such close contact with her.”

“So Señora Murillo immediately fell for your deception?”

“No”, Sergio hastened to explain. “She searched me the second time I approached her on the suspicion that I was a journalist. Two days later she demanded to search the place I was staying at, the hangar. I had anticipated that and showed her a different location which made her rule me out as a suspect.”

The secretary eagerly wrote down everything he said.

“We know that inspectora Murillo drove you to the house in Toledo after she found out about your true identity. She didn’t arrest you there. What happened?”

Sergio hesitated. How much did they know? Were there still charges against her?

“She questioned me”, he replied vaguely.

“Why didn’t she arrest you?”, the judge pressed on.

“She wanted to. I managed to… incapacitate her. I took her phone and fled.”

The judge nodded. That seemed to suffice for now.

“Señora Murillo, we have taken your statement beforehand and the facts seem to add up, but is there anything in Señor Marquina’s testimony that you would like to correct or do you have anything to add?”

Raquel slightly straightened her posture. “No”, she replied with a steady voice.

The judge simply took notice of that. “I would like you to answer some questions for more clarity as well.”

Raquel nodded.

“As of last week, you quit your position within the police altogether. I assume this stands in direct connection to the events of the case?”

Sergio raised his eyebrows. She had quit? What did that mean? He turned to look at her, as if the answer would somehow be written on her face.

“Everything I have to say concerning my notice is in the letter that was published a few days ago”, Raquel replied curtly.

The judge pulled out a piece of paper from his materials and paused for a few seconds. “It states that you quit because you weren’t content with how the case was handled altogether. That’s a very vague explanation. Would you like to elaborate?”

Her answer came quickly but Sergio couldn’t help but notice that she exchanged a short glance with Coronel Prieto who raised his eyebrows in a meaningful manner.

“No, no further comment”, she said and leaned back in her chair. This was all they were going to get from her.

This had probably something to do with the pending law suit concerning Alberto. It would have been the perfect opportunity to explain that she hadn’t actually wanted to risk the lives of ten innocent hostages in favour of Alison Parker’s. Sergio nervously shifted in his chair. He hated that she was being forced into this position, hated himself for including her in his plan, hated the system and the police, who didn’t even respect her as one of their own.


	5. Chapter 5

Seventy-four years in prison. That was his sentence and the last words of the judge that seemed to hang in the air for quite a while. Then the gavel hit the table for the third time and the room began to fill with noise. People were getting up and going home.

“Come on”, one of Sergio’s guards rumbled and he was motioned to get up.

They were about to go outside of the court building when one of the court guards stopped them. “Wait a minute. There’s too much chaos outside. It seems like every press in the country has sent their people to get the latest information. We’ll have to wait for our security to clear the area in front of the building.”

The guard on the right to Sergio gave a displeased sound. “Better make it quick”, he sighed.

“I’ll lead you to a room where you can wait”, the guard offered. “Señora Murillo”, he called out and out of the corner of his eyes, Sergio saw Raquel approaching. “You should probably use that option too.”

She eyed Sergio from the side. “Thanks, I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? You don’t want to be run over by all these reporters, do you?”, the guard asked and pulled away a window curtain which cleared the view to the place in front of the building. It was total chaos. Countless people, a crowd with cameras and microphones, already struggling for the best spot right in front of the door. Two security guys were having trouble keeping the mob within their bounds.

Raquel took a look outside and gave in with a sigh. “Alright”, she admitted.

They were led to a small room nearby.

“I’ll let you know when the way’s clear”, said the guard and left.

It was quiet for at least a minute. Raquel had snatched herself a chair far away from Sergio and was decidedly staring in a different direction.

“Raquel”, Sergio started hesitantly. It seemed like she forced herself to look in his direction. “Can we talk?”, he asked. He felt stupid, especially with the guards present. But he had to say something. It was probably the last time he would ever get to see her. 

“I wouldn’t know what for”, she replied with a harsh voice.

This was not going so well.

“Please, Raquel, please give me five minutes to… explain.”

She shook her head. “You have already explained yourself.”

“Don’t you feel the need to talk…?”, Sergio pressed on. “Five minutes?”

He could see that she was struggling with herself. “Fine”, she mumbled and turned towards the guards. “Would you mind waiting outside?”

“I am not sure that’s a good idea”, one of them said.

“Palacios, please do me the favour”, Raquel tried. Apparently she knew that guy. “I’ll take the responsibility for it.”

He gave in. “Fine. Five minutes. We’ll be right outside the door if he tries something.” With that they left, not before shooting a warning look to Sergio.

Then they were alone.

“So”, Raquel stood up, circling the room, but always keeping her distance to him. “What do you want to talk about?”

She wasn’t even looking at him.

Sergio wanted to say so many things. “You quit?”, he said instead. He didn’t know himself if it was a question or simply a statement.

She pursed her lips. Then she nodded.

“Why?”, he asked hesitantly. “You were… really good at your job.” As soon as he had said it Sergio felt like a fool.

She raised her eyebrows at him. “Apparently not good enough to realize the man I slept with was also the man flirting with me over the phone as the professor”, she simply replied.

“I’m so sorry, Raquel”, he blurted out. “I’m really sorry.”

“You have ruined my life”, she suddenly snapped. Sergio hadn’t expected her to turn that quickly towards him and he took a step backwards. Her face was full of disgust.

He cleared his throat. “Have I?”, he started quietly yet determinedly, and she looked confused at his calm counter. “Or have they? Prieto, your ex-husband… even Ángel?”

“Don’t you blame this on them”, she said and her voice was trembling. She ran her fingers through her hair and took a deep breath. Sergio quietly observed her as she wandered in circles around the room. He could see that she was ringing for words, for an explanation maybe or just for a way to get rid of all her feelings towards him.

“Yes”, she finally admitted. “Those people are part of why my life is a living hell right now. But just because everyone else treats me like shit doesn’t make it okay for you to do so too. You used me too! I was only a puppet in your plan as well”, she raged.

The hurt in her eyes caused a sharp pain in Sergio’s chest. He hadn’t meant for that to happen, she needed to know that.

“You were the only crack in an otherwise perfect plan.”, he replied. “A plan that had been perfect and no longer was from the moment that I met you. You know why?” She provocatively raised her eyebrows and he took a deep breath. "Even if all this had gone well I would have been fucked. Because I would have never seen you again. Do you think it was my plan to fall in love with the inspector in charge?”

“Don’t you give me that shit about being in love with me again”, she replied angrily.

Sergio slowly approached her. “Why did I come back for you then? Why did I drive all the way to your ex-husbands house just in case of the slight possibility that you might actually be in danger when I could have easily just taken the money and fled the country? What other reason should there be?”

Her expression faltered. “I don’t want to hear any more from you”, she barely whispered, not looking him in the face. It didn’t sound convincing.

“You don’t want to hear from me? Why? Because I’m a bad guy? Raquel, you’ve been taught to see everything as good or bad. But what we’re doing is okay to you when other people do it. In the year 2011, the European Central Bank made 171 billion euros out of nowhere. Just like we were doing. Only bigger. One hundred eighty-five billion in 2012. Do you know where all that money went? To the banks. Directly from the factory to the pockets of the rich. Did anyone say that the European Central Bank was a thief?” Sergio pushed his glasses up his nose, which wasn’t as easy with the handcuffs. “‘Liquidity injections’, they called it. And they pulled it out of nowhere. Out of nowhere.” She had come to halt and listened to him with a sceptical expression now. “I have a made a liquidity injection, Raquel, but not for the bankers. I have done it here, in the real economy. With this group of losers, which is what we are, Raquel.”

She vehemently shook her head as if that would make him shut up immediately.

“I know you’re doubting the system as well. You have seen the injustice it imposes on certain people, joder, you have been victimized by the system yourself.”

She opened her mouth to reply something but Sergio didn’t let her get a chance to speak. He needed to say this. And she needed to hear it.

“You can lie to me, Raquel, but don’t lie to yourself”, he stopped her. “You know the system and you hate it as much as I do. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have quit your job. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have agreed to talk to me right now.”

She stared at him in silence, baffled, and Sergio realized he was trembling, his hands shaking.

“That’s why I did it. To get away. Don’t you want to get away? Don’t you want to escape?”, he breathed his question.

Raquel’s face was filled with a painful expression, so painful, Sergio wanted to reach out to her and hold her tightly in his arms. Her hand searched for a strand of her hair, an insecure gesture, Sergio hadn’t yet seen on her.

“Where to?”, she sounded desperate. “Even if what you said was true…”, she replied and Sergio’s heart skipped a beat at the fact that she even considered the possibility of leaving, that his assumption might prove right. “I have a sick mother and a daughter here, I can’t just decide to skip town. I can’t just leave them here like you would have left me”, she added with an utter bitterness in her voice.

“I would have taken all of you with me”, Sergio tried to fix the situation.

A sour laugh escaped her chest.

“I mean it”, Sergio hastened to explain. “You want proof? Look at the postcards I gave you at _Hanoi_.”

She looked confused. So she hadn’t looked at the postcards again. Before she could answer him, the door opened and Palacios came back in. “Marquina, we’re ready to leave.”

He took him by the arm and led him towards the exit. “See you, Raquel”, Palacios called above his shoulder.

She turned towards him and Sergio thought her eyes looked somewhat teary. “Goodbye”, she replied quietly.

Sergio carried the look that she gave him in that moment all the way with him to prison.


	6. Chapter 6

Raquel tossed around in her bed. She was being chased through the streets of Madrid, unable to escape her pursuers. This scenario wasn’t exactly new to her. Ever since she had managed to brake loose from her ex-husband, Alberto had started to appear in her dreams as a relentless persecutor, following her every step. This time there were more people. Ángel, begging her to give him a second chance, Prieto, laughing at her and telling her, she had simply never been fit for the position as inspectora in charge, even Alicia, asking her why she had quit and thrown her career away like that. And then suddenly him. The professor. He didn’t follow her. He led her through the streets of Madrid, telling her to just keep following him, trusting him. She had no control over her body, her legs, so she was forced to stick with him until they turned around a corner and suddenly stood in front of the Royal Mint. He faced her and produced a red overall out of nowhere. “Here, take this and go in.”

Raquel shook her head.

“Come on, I know you want to.”

“No, I don’t. I’m not a criminal”, she protested.

“It’s time you decide for yourself who are the good ones and who are the bad ones”, he said. Then he grabbed a Dalí mask from his pocket and covered his face with it. As Raquel turned around she saw hundreds of people around her, all wearing Dalí masks, coming closer and talking to her at the same time until every sound just became a steady hum, a vibrating tone in her brain. Then she woke up.

She had originally meant to take a quick nap after the court hearing but now she could see it was getting dark outside. She must have slept for hours. She felt even more exhausted though. But the thought of going back to sleep didn’t sound so good in the face of the danger that the dream returned.

Raquel went to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water. He had truly messed with her brain back there. Telling her what he did had some good purpose. As if he wouldn’t just have taken the money and live his best life on some remote island in the Caribbean. What about all the people he had managed to win over for his so called resistance act that he left behind here? What about her? At that thought Raquel felt the anger over his betrayal come back and quickly shook her head in an attempt to snap out of it.

On the commode in the hallway was a post-it from her mother.

_Brought Paula to her karate lesson. Going to the hairdresser now._

This. This was the reason she couldn’t stay in this state of mind for ever. Her mother and her daughter. What was done was done. She had quit her job – thankfully – the court hearing was over, she had nothing to do with that case anymore. The guy was in prison for the rest of his life and even if she wanted to, she couldn’t change a single thing about that. What was important now was the future of this family. Period.

Encouraged, Raquel went to the living room to tidy up the mess that Paula had made while finishing her art project for school, only to realize, there was already someone there.

There were two of them. A young man and a woman, both pointing a gun at her. Within the millisecond it took Raquel’s heart beat to go up to a thousand, she realized who exactly was standing in front of her. She had seen these people before. Aníbal Cortés and Ágata Jiménez. She knew the faces from the photos the police had published. Instinctively her hand went to the left side of her waist where her gun would naturally be but she grasped at nothing.

“Keep calm, we just want to talk”, said the woman.

“Doesn’t look like that to me”, Raquel squeezed out. Her voice sounded far more calm than she was actually feeling right now given the fact she had very little opportunity to get out of this situation. Her gun was neatly hidden in a nightstand drawer and her phone had died shortly after she had left the court house.

“What do you want?”, Raquel asked while taking a step backwards. Better to start a conversation and keep them busy while trying to get out of the house.

“Don’t even think about it”, said the woman harshly. “Helsinki is standing at the front door making sure you won’t escape. If you try anything or scream, things will end badly”, she continued.

Shit. This was not going well. What _did_ they want? Why were they here of all places?

“Sit”, Aníbal motioned to the couch. Raquel did as told. Maybe she could negotiate her way out of this until she found a way to contact the police. She sat down and looked at them expectantly. They two of them eyed each other and lowered their guns only a bit.

“We just want to talk”, the woman said again and slowly placed her pistol on the couch table in front of her as a sign of good will. Aníbal kept his gun tightly in his hand. Then they each took a seat in front of Raquel, blocking the immediate way to the door – and thus her only option to escape.

“Aren’t you supposed to be on the other side of the world right now, enjoying your newly gained wealth?”, Raquel asked and crossed her arms.

“Yeah, well”, the woman said. “As you must know best of all, our leader was captured and brought to prison. We obviously can’t leave without him.”

Raquel let out a faint laughter. “It’s not very common for criminals to feel such a strong responsibility for each other”, she observed. She was trying to keep them talking, distract them, until she figured out a way to get out of this.

“We’re family”, Aníbal said. God, he was still so young. Maybe she could appeal to his senses. He might still be impressionable.

“Aníbal”, Raquel started. “Don’t get even more entangled in these criminal activities. You might not get out as easily this time.”

“Spare me your negotiations, inspectora”, he countered. “My name is Rio. And this is Nairobi, by the way.”

The woman curled a strand of her dark coloured hair between her fingers. “Pleasure”, she said.

Raquel shook her head in face of the sheer absurdity this situation presented. The criminals of the biggest heist in the history of Spain, sitting in the living room of the former inspectora in charge. Hopefully they still played by their no-deaths rule.

“The professor has been sentenced to 74 years of prison and there’s no way you’re going to get him out of there”, she stated.

Nairobi leaned forward. “That’s why we want you to help us get him out.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me”, Raquel got up from the couch. This charade had to end now.

“Hey, sit down”, Rio ordered and waved his pistol in her face. Raquel quickly raised her arms to calm him down.

“Alright, está bien.” She sat back down and took a deep breath. “Why would you even think for a second that I would help you and not turn you in the moment I have the chance to?”

Rio eyed Nairobi nervously. “I told you we shouldn’t have asked her”, he said but Nairobi simply smiled.

“Watch and lea- “, she started but was interrupted by a loud noise coming from the front door. Nairobi and Rio were up on their feet in a second and looked expectantly towards the hallway.

“You go and check what’s going on, I’ll stay here with her”, Nairobi ordered and Rio left the room, his pistol raised.

They had been careless. In the second it had taken both of them to turn towards the door and decide who was going to have a look, Raquel had reached across the table and gotten hold of Nairobi’s gun. This was her chance. But for some reason, while both she and Nairobi waited for Rio to return, she hesitated.

“False alarm”, Rio called from the hallway and returned to the room a moment later.

Without thinking it through, Raquel hid the newly acquired gun in the hem of her trousers behind her back. Some part of her wanted to see what those two had to say to her.

“Moving on”, Nairobi said and focussed her attention back on Raquel. “Apparently you had a rather intimate relationship with the professor.”

Raquel’s heart sank. This again.

“Don’t try to deny it. Rio hacked into the police data base system.”

“Yeah”, he affirmed. “We saw everything. All the statements, the operation details as well as the surveillance camera tape that caught the two of you kissing at a café in town.”

Nairobi didn’t try to hide her grin. “Girl, you have no idea how lucky you are that they dropped those charges against you.”

“It’s all nepotism”, Raquel simply said. “They couldn’t risk that I spill to much information on the case. That’s their way of legally blackmailing me.” She didn’t know why she was telling them this. “Would you get to the point?”

“That is exactly the point, inspectora. Even though you turned the professor in they still arrested you, they still did not believe you. Plus, no one is supporting you regarding that lawsuit against your ex-husband. They think it’s a false denunciation. So you quit. Because you hate the system as well.”

Raquel straightened her posture. She hated having her problems demonstrated to her like that. “You’ve really done your research. And now what?”

„We’ll get him out of course.”, Rio said. “And you’re helping us.”

“Oh no”, she shook her head.

“Oh yes”, Nairobi replied.

“Are you threatening me?”

“No”, she said, still smiling. Weirdly, she radiated this utterly enthusiastic attitude. Something made her seem so sure that she would persuade Raquel to help them. “I don’t need to threaten you because you are already considering our proposal. You could have put us out of action a long time ago, I noticed that you got hold of my gun. But you didn’t.” Raquel bit her lip. “Trust me, I know what it feels like to be screwed over again and again and again. Especially as a woman living in a men’s world. Right now, you’re doubting as much as I am who are the good ones and who are the bad ones. And rightfully so. But let me tell you one thing. The professor – definitely one of the good ones. He doesn’t deserve to rot in prison for the rest of his life.”

It was silent for a moment.

“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t help you.”

“I wouldn’t say that. Your knowledge is the key. And your connections.”

Suddenly, there was a loud knock coming from the door. A warning. A moment later, Raquel saw a car pulling up the driveway. It was her mother.

“Joder”, hissed Rio. “Let’s get out of here.”

The two of them got up and Nairobi turned to Raquel.

“Here”, she said and handed her a piece of paper. “Call me.”

With that they turned to leave through the back door. Raquel let them.

“She’ll come around”, was the last thing she heard Nairobi say before the door slammed shut. Raquel shook her head. Did she think she could simply get away with this?

The next moment, the front door opened and her mother came in. “Hola cariño”, she called. “How was it?”

“What?”, Raquel asked, confused.

“The hearing, cariño. Are you getting even more forgetful than your mother?”, she chuckled.

Raquel managed to smile at her. “It went alright, I guess. The worst part is over now”, she mumbled, unsure what to do next. “Mamá, I’m still very tired. I’m going to take a quick nap before picking up Paula from her karate lesson.”

“Of course, go and rest”, her mother affirmed her and lightly stroked her shoulder.

Raquel didn’t call the cops. She made herself believe it was out of selfish reasons. She didn’t want to explain to her former bosses why these people had looked for her. Leave a statement. Again. And she didn’t want to concern her mother and her daughter with the fact that the most wanted criminals of Spain had access to her house. No, this was the best for all of them.

So much for finishing that part of her live and forgetting everything.

It might be best to have her gun close at all times now though. When Raquel opened the drawer of her nightstand to get out the pistol, something else caught her eye. The postcards. He had mentioned those earlier and she had completely forgotten to look at them, that’s how exhausted she had been when she had come home again.

She took the cards out of the drawer. Palawan. That was the card she had picked. For a while, Raquel stared at the picture on the front of the card. It looked beautiful. It looked like paradise.

_Don’t you want to get away?_

She flipped the card around to see what it said when she noticed a piece of handwriting in one of the corners. Numbers and letters. Feeling like she was onto something, although not yet quite aware of what it was, she turned around the other postcards too. They fit together like a puzzle. And the result? Coordinates.

_Don’t you want to escape?_

Raquel grabbed her phone and opened google maps.

Her fingers were shaking.

Palawan.

_Don’t you want to escape?_

She let the phone fall to the ground.

He had wanted her to come with him.

She had had the location all along.


	7. Chapter 7

The day after the hearing Sergio found himself wandering through the prison halls. He was restless. The majority of his life he had spent perfecting a plan that in the end had been everything but perfect. It had gotten him to prison. At least it had kept him occupied during his life. It had given him something to believe in, something worth living and fighting for. It had kept him sane. Keeping sane was a task he didn’t manage to fulfil in prison. The look of disgust the guards gave him every day. The lack of privacy. The brutality. Sergio needed to get out of here immediately but he couldn’t find the energy within himself to develop a proper plan. Besides, there was no one worth escaping for on the outside. The only brother he had, had died. The only woman he ever loved, despised him. Escaping would mean freedom, but it would also mean loneliness.

“Marquina”, the voice of a guard named Martínez pulled him from his thoughts. “Come with me. You have a visitor.”

A visitor?

Sergio pushed his glasses up his nose. “Who?”

“Hurry up”, Martínez ignored him and Sergio hastened to follow him through the corridors.

When he heard the buzzing and the doors to the visitor room opened, Sergio was almost anxious to see who had come to visit him. But he would have never anticipated the person who he actually saw sitting there now.

She was rather crouching on her chair, her arms crossed in a defensive manner and her gaze directed to the ground. Suddenly he felt really self-conscious and wished that the prison uniform was any other colour than yellow. As he approached her, she looked up at him and adjusted her posture slightly. Sergio couldn’t read the expression in her face, yet her big brown eyes captivated him from the very first second she had laid her eyes on him.

“Raquel?” His voice sounded hoarse.

“Sit”, a guard ordered him. “You have thirty minutes. Hands on the table where I can see them. No physical contact.”

Sergio nodded absent-mindedly and took the seat at the table in front of Raquel. She looked even more exhausted today.

“Why did you come?”, he asked. He hated that he sounded so shy.

She slightly shrugged her shoulders.

“Are they treating you alright?”, she asked. Her voice was so faint, so quiet, insecure even.

Sergio was still in shock about her presence. He was even more taken aback by that question. She cared about his well-being?

“Well, the guards are alright. My roommates are… different”, he started, adjusting his glasses. “I have yet to get used to the whole not going outside and leaving situation”, he tried to joke. Her upper lip curled only a bit just to take on a serious expression again in the next second. She shook her head.

“Sorry, this has been a mistake”, she made to get up. “I should go.”

“No”, he hastened to say and she stopped in her tracks. “Please stay. I don’t know what suddenly made you come here but I am glad you did. Please, say what you came here to say.”

She sat back down at the table and started fiddling with her visitor card, apparently gathering her thoughts.

“I thought about what you said about good and bad”, she finally said and looked at him again. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I was conditioned to seeing everyone on the other side as bad, not recognizing the individual behind that.” With the other side she was of course referring to his side. The criminal’s side. “And maybe I am doing you wrong by looking at it that way – at least partly.” He listened attentively. Where was this going? “But you did me wrong too, you know?”, she moved closer to the table, her hands were so near now, he could have touched them if he wanted to. “You planned to do all these things to me, releasing the phone calls to the press, using my personal situation, my lawsuit against my ex-husband? When you planned all this you didn’t see me as a person either. You saw someone working for the police, an institution you resented. To you, I wasn’t worth more than a playing piece. You immediately saw me as bad. You did the same thing.”

Sergio swallowed. “You’re right. I did. And I realized I was wrong in doing so the second I got to know you, the real you. Not the outer shell of an inspectora Murillo, I had read about online and in police data bases, the one I was planning to outwit. But you. The smart and determined woman that you are. A mother. A daughter. A lover.” He had spoken the words before he really thought about it. Now he felt his cheeks fill with blood.

She looked at him with a painful look. Maybe this declaration had been too much.

“Do you regret doing it at all?”, she asked.

“Having to involve you? Yes. I wish I had found another way. I wish I had known better.” Sergio took a deep breath. He wanted to be honest. “But regretting going through with the heist? No. This is my life’s work. My father’s work. It’s a crucial part of what I believed in, even so long after my father’s death. My brother and I spent years working on it.”

“Your brother?”, Raquel asked.

Sergio nodded and immediately felt like a heavy weight was pushing him down.

“Andrés de Fonollosa was my brother”, he revealed. It was the first time he had spoken his name after he had learned of his death.

Raquel’s eyes widened. She hadn’t known. “I’m sorry for your loss”, she said. It sounded so genuine. The way she looked at him he thought she could see directly into his soul.

“Thank you.”

“And the others? Were they family too?”, she continued.

“No”, Sergio shook his head. “But now they are somehow. Spending six months with the same people and one shared goal under one roof brings you close together.”

Raquel nodded. He felt vulnerable under her gaze.

“Are you not at all angry at me for arresting you?”, Raquel asked.

Why did she need to know?

“No”, Sergio replied and once again he realized his answer was sincere. “You had every right to do so.”

She nodded quietly but didn’t say anything.

He took a deep breath. “Do you wish you hadn’t arrested me?”, he dared to ask.

She paused for a second. “Maybe”, was the reluctant answer. “I just wish none of this would have happened.”

“Do you wish you hadn’t quit?”, he continued.

Raquel didn’t hesitate this time. “No”, she vehemently shook her head. “It was time. I was miserable in that job.”

Her lips began to curl upwards and Sergio realized she was smiling, she was actually smiling at him. He returned the smile and a nervous chuckle escaped his chest. Then both of them fell silent. This was a hell of a weird situation and if someone had told him two weeks ago that the former inspectora in charge of his case was visiting him in prison, he would have declared that person nuts. Yet, here they were.

“I looked at the postcards”, she suddenly burst out. She seemed hesitant to ask the following question. “So you really wanted me to come with you?”

Sergio didn’t hesitate. “Yes, I really did. All that I’ve said is true. I’ve fallen in love with you.”

Would she slap him again? There was no reason he should lie to her now. Maybe he had gone too far.

She didn’t slap him. Instead she reached for his hand. “Sergio” she said and he was shocked by the sound of his name coming out of her mouth. “I’m so sorry.”

She barely whispered the words and Sergio could see a tear running down her cheek.

“Me too”, he mumbled and suddenly realized his face was overflown by tears as well.

Her hand was so warm, so soft, he wanted to hold it for ever.

“No physical contact”, barked the guard and the moment was over.

Raquel quickly put her hands in her lap. She looked around as if she was only now realizing they were in a dark and cold visiting room of a high-security prison. She quickly wiped away the tears in her eyes.

“I should probably go now”, she said and stood up.

Sergio followed her lead. “Will you come back?”, he asked.

She stared at him for a few seconds. “I… I don’t know.”

Sergio nodded. It didn’t say anything more. It was her choice, if she came back.

“Okay, so… bye.”

“Bye”, Sergio whispered. Then she turned around and left.


	8. Chapter 8

When Raquel came home from the prison – how did that even sound? – she was exhausted. The talk with Sergio had strained her emotionally and she needed some time to process everything. There was no denying it now. He had really fallen in love with her, he had wanted her to get away with him, away from this mess of a life. And as much as Raquel tried to remind herself that he had betrayed her, she couldn’t help but feel something for him too. As much as this messed with the world view she had had her entire life, she had to admit, in many aspects, she thought he was right.

Her thoughts were interrupted as her mother came out of the kitchen.

“Hola, cariño, where have you been?”

Raquel hesitated. Oh, what the hell.

“I’ve been visiting Sergio.”

“Who?”, her mother looked confused as Raquel followed her into the living room and sat down on the couch beside her.

“Salva, mamá”, Raquel explained.

“Oh, I liked him. Such a gentleman”, her mother exclaimed as she started to remember him.

“That gentleman is now in prison for the next 74 years”, she objected, if only to remind herself of this very important fact. Whatever happened a few hours ago, whatever she seemed to feel right now, didn’t change anything. Anything.

Mariví chuckled. “So? I still liked him. And I think you did too, cariño, didn’t you?”

Raquel was stunned by her mother’s reaction. Her own mother, the mother of a former police inspector, didn’t care much about the fact that someone was a criminal.

“It doesn’t matter”, Raquel replied. “It’s over now.”

“Why did you visit him then?”

Raquel stopped. “Because… I needed answers”, she concluded.

“Well… that doesn’t sound like it’s over to me”, Mariví said. “For all I know it’s never too late”, her mother winked at her and got up. “Oh, there’s some mail for you on the commode in the hallway”, she said before going upstairs.

Raquel shook her head at her mother’s optimistic mind-set and went to look for the mail.

There was a letter from court. Probably something about the heist again.

As Raquel opened the letter she had to find out differently. It was a claim for sole custody, submitted by her ex-husband, Alberto Vicuña.

She could barely cling to the banister before her knees gave away and she slid to the ground. This could not be happening. She read the lines over and over again but there it was in black and white. Her ex-husband had the nerve to use this miserable situation in her life to take away Paula from her. Raquel tried to breathe through the tears and attempted to think realistically. But who was she kidding? She was a single mom with no job, a bad reputation in the whole country right now and on top of that a sick mother. How could she take care of a child under these circumstances? From the court’s point of view, the decision was probably an easy one. Raquel’s heart was racing at the thought of Paula living with Alberto. It might go well at first but then his temper would take the best of him. Raquel shuddered at the image of him when he was angry und drunk, ready to strike her at the slightest mistake that annoyed him. She couldn’t let that happen to her daughter. But how? How could she keep that from happening? Who would help her? Her thoughts collapsed inside her brain and she tried to remain quiet, if only not to draw attention to her mother who was upstairs.

Raquel got up and tried to sort herself. She laid the letter next to the telephone on the commode and stopped.

Should she call her?

Raquel reached into her pocked and drew out the piece of paper with Nairobi’s number on it. She fiddled with the small note, twisting it around, crumpling it into a tiny ball, only to straighten it again. Was she crazy? First, visiting a criminal in prison, then, even considering to meet with his fellow gang members on the run to conspire against the police?

 _We’re family._ Both Rio and Sergio had confirmed that these people were more than just a gang of criminals that had joined forces out of pure necessity. They cared for each other, for fuck’s sake, his team members were risking themselves right now by staying in Madrid and planning to get their leader out. They had integrity. They had even risked looking for her, coming to her house. Raquel let out a frustrated sigh. It should have been clear to her when she didn’t report them. Nairobi had realized, a lot faster than her, that Raquel would not tell on them. That her world view was already on the verge of turning upside down.

 _She’ll come around._ Raquel puffed. Wasn’t she a playing piece in their plan to? She was sick of that. Calling Nairobi would mean that there was no going back. If anyone found out about this, it would not end well. No, she told herself. Don’t do it. Just don’t.

But then she thought of Sergio again, sitting in front of her in the prison’s visitor’s room, destined to spent the rest of his life in a cell, and her heart began to melt. Raquel let out a frustrated groan and forced herself to go into the kitchen to do something else and think of something else, anything.

An hour later she found herself looking at that note again. There was something back in her stomach that kept nagging at her, wanting to act and not just wait for someone to blow up her life in a thousand pieces.

Before she had entirely thought it through she had typed in the number, listening to the connecting signal.

“Si?”

“It’s Raquel. Can we meet?”

Raquel had left the house in a hurry. She tried not to be totally careless. Before leaving she had sent her live location to her mother’s phone and wrote her a post-it saying she should send someone after her if she wasn’t at home by seven in the evening. This could all go downhill after all. Still, she somehow needed to do this.

She met Nairobi on a deserted parking lot outside of Madrid. This time she hadn’t brought Rio but a big, beardy guy who she called Helsinki. He didn’t talk much, none of them did actually. Raquel had to leave her car on the parking lot and joined Nairobi and Helsinki in their tiny polo. There was no going back now. She reassured herself once again that her gun was still at her side but that was all she could do.

They drove fifteen minutes to an old warehouse in the middle of nowhere. When they entered the building Raquel saw that a few other people were waiting for them.

“We’re back”, Nairobi called and they approached the group. “Welcome, inspectora.”

Raquel cringed at the expression and proceeded to muster the people in front of her. There was Silene Oliveira – Tokyo – of course. She encountered her with a hateful expression, taking one step forward as if to threaten her.

“Have you searched her? Has she a tracking device?”

“Calm down, Tokyo”, Nairobi said. “She’s cool.”

But Raquel didn’t want to play that game. She took a step forward as well. “If you thought, I would come here unprepared, you thought wrong.”

She saw Tokyo’s hand flinch towards her back pocket, where she had probably stashed a gun herself. In an instance, Raquel did the same but neither of them drew their weapons.

“One proposition”, Raquel said, barely an inch away from Tokyo’s face. “I’ll keep my gun tucked away and you do the same. No need to make this complicated.”

Tokyo raised her eyebrows. “Does anyone know you’re here?”

“Someone will look for me if I haven’t returned in the evening”, Raquel replied.

Tokyo considered this for a second and finally let go of her gun.

“Great”, Nairobi concluded. “Now that we’ve established common ground, meet the other gang members. You already know Rio and Helsinki”, she said and the two men nodded to Raquel. Next to them was a young man that Raquel remembered as Ricardo Ramos from the police reports – and a woman with curly blonde hair.

“And these are Denver and Estocolmo”, Nairobi concluded.

Raquel raised her eyebrows. Mónica Gaztambide. So it was true. They had taken a hostage with them.

“Are you here of your own accord?”, she asked her.

“Yes”, the woman nodded and her hand searched for Denver’s hand until they enclosed each other.

Nairobi smirked. “You and the professor aren’t the only ones finding love in this mess of a heist.”

Raquel was taken aback. How did this happen? At the same time, she felt the blood run through her cheeks. She felt uneasy at the thought of them knowing about their relationship. How much did they know about her? They must have studied her life thoroughly before the heist.

“So you called me because you wanted to meet”, Nairobi got to the point. “I assume you’re ready to help us get the professor out of prison?”

Raquel hesitated. “I want to hear your plan first.”

“Oh come on”, Tokyo snapped. “This was the most stupid idea ever. She’s just here for the plan, then she’s going to rat us out and we’re all going to get arrested after all.”

Of course she would be the one to make this even more complicated. Raquel hadn’t like Tokyo from the second she had met her in the Royal Mint.

“She has a point”, Denver said. “We can’t just trust her like that, Nairobi. We need some kind of insurance.”

“Guys, she quit her job, she is not with the police anymore”, Nairobi objected.

“She arrested the professor”, Tokyo shouted at her. “We can’t trust someone like that.”

Raquel internally rolled her eyes at the quarrel. Why did they even decide to bring her in if they weren’t completely sure about it? Then she made a snap decision, calmly drew out her gun and laid it on the floor.

“Oh, that proofs nothing”, Tokyo almost screamed. “You’re outnumbered anyway.”

“Exactly”, Raquel concluded and Tokyo looked confused. “Why would I put myself in this dangerous situation if I didn’t want to consider your proposition? I could say the same thing. What’s my insurance?”

“You know that we’re still in Spain”, Tokyo snapped. “That’s already enough, don’t you think?”

“If she wanted to get us she would have already told the police we’re still in Spain.”, Nairobi said. “Rio hacked into the system an hour ago, there’s nothing in there.”

“Yeah”, Rio chimed in. “They think we’re on the other side of the world.”

Tokyo turned to him now. She looked angry and somewhat disappointed. “She hasn’t reported it now because she wants to play hero and present them with our plan!”

“We don’t even have a proper plan”, Nairobi objected. “Tokyo, we need her. We don’t stand a chance without her expertise. If Mónica can decide to join us even though we have taken her hostage and Berlin literally ordered to kill her only a few days ago, why can’t she?”

“Once a cop, always a cop”, Tokyo mumbled but Nairobi ignored her and finally turned to Raquel.

“Inspectora”, she said. “You decide now. Are you in or are you out?”

They were interrupted by the noise of a car engine in the distance. All heads turned towards the small window to the street and everyone rushed to see who was coming. It couldn’t be a coincidence that a car found its way to this warehouse.

“Joder”, Denver exclaimed at the sight of the black car approaching. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Wait”, Raquel said after taking a closer look through the window. “I know that car.”


	9. Chapter 9

All heads turned towards her.

“See, she made sure someone would follow us”, Tokyo concluded and pointed her gun at Raquel. She quickly raised her arms. Would the others follow Tokyo’s suit? Had she that much power in this group?

Raquel shook her head and took a look at the car again. “That’s Ángel’s car.”

“Your sub-inspector?”, Denver asked.

Raquel nodded. How did he know where she was? What did he want? She didn’t even know he was fit enough to leave the house again after the coma.

“He’s alone, we can take him”, Rio said and released the safety catch of his gun.

“Let me talk to him”, Raquel said, her arms still raised at the sight of Tokyo’s gun. “I swear to you I don’t know how he found us.”

“No way”, Tokyo said.

Suddenly Helsinki, who had been quiet this entire time, took a step towards Tokyo and gently made her lower her gun with his arm. “Let her talk to him. We can knock them out any time.”

Raquel raised her eyebrows. “That’s reassuring”, she mumbled and couldn’t help but notice that Nairobi was trying to suppress a grin.

“Alright”, Tokyo said, took one step closer and lifted Raquel’s chin with her gun. “If you try anything, you’re dead”, she spat.

Raquel swallowed and stopped herself from giving a sassy reply.

Ángel’s car was just coming to a stop and he opened the driver’s door.

“Vamos”, Nairobi whispered and the others positioned behind the door so they could hear the conversation. Then Raquel went outside.

“Ángel?”, she greeted him as he approached. “What are you doing here?”

“Raquel”, he hurried over. “I’ve tried calling you like a thousand times.”

Shit. She had had her phone on mute.

“Your mother called me because she couldn’t reach you”, Ángel said.

“What is it?”

“Alberto was at your house, apparently. He wanted to take Paula with him.”

“What?”, Raquel burst out.

“Don’t worry, he hasn’t taken her. She wasn’t even at home actually.”

Raquel felt her heart pumping blood through her veins. That son of a bitch.

“But your mom sounded pretty wound up. She told me she had never seen Alberto that way, so angry and aggressive. She thought he might have been drunk. She called me, to make sure you were alright.”

Raquel had to digest the news first. “Where’s Paula now?”

“Still at school. I called them and told them to not let her go with her father under any circumstances. I said you would pick her up later.”

Raquel threw her arms around Ángel. “Thank you”, she breathed.

“Sure”, Ángel replied a bit perplexed until she let go of him again.

Raquel studied his face. “How did you even find me?”

“Your mom said you sent her your location.”

Right. Her precaution had turned out to be a pitfall, of course.

“What are you doing here?”, Ángel asked, looking around and starting to inspect the warehouse more closely.

“I just needed to get out of the city for a while”, Raquel lied.

“To an old warehouse in the middle of nowhere?”, Ángel asked suspiciously. 

Raquel shrugged. “Honestly, I just started driving and somehow ended up here”, she answered vaguely. “I didn’t know you were out of the hospital”, she tried to change the subject.

“They released me three days ago”, Ángel replied. Then he sighed. “Raquel, what is going on? You quit your job, you’ve stopped answering my texts, then I find you in deserted warehouses in the middle of nowhere?”

Raquel closed her eyes in agony. “I don’t know, Ángel.”

“Fabio told me you visited that guy in prison? The professor?”

Raquel groaned. Why did Ángel have to have prison guard friends? Why did news like this always have to spread so fast?

“That’s none of his business”, she said.

“But it’s mine”, Ángel objected. “Raquel, I worry about you. What has this professor said to you that you’re acting like this?”

“Nothing.” She started to become irritated. “This has nothing to do with him.”

Ángel shook his head. “Come on. I’ve read the statements, the police reports.” He paused. “Are you in love with him?”

Raquel held up her hands. “Just… stop”, she exclaimed. “Stop trying to control me.”

She felt anger rising in her chest. Why couldn’t he be a normal friend to her – just once?

“I’m not trying to con– “

“Please leave me alone, Ángel, I can’t do this right now.”

Thankfully he shut up. Both of them stood there silently for a while.

“Do you want a ride into the city?”, he asked.

“No, my car is parked on the other side of the warehouse”, Raquel lied, hoping Ángel wouldn’t want to reassure himself. If he did, he would only find a blue polo that was certainly not belonging to her.

“Alright. Don’t take too long”, he said. “Your mother sounded pretty riled up.”

Raquel nodded. Ángel stood there like that for another five seconds until he shrugged, pulled a discontent face and turned around.

“Sorry”, Raquel mumbled as he walked up to his car.

She leaned against the wall of the warehouse and watched him get into his car.

Then the emotions started to overtake her. Alberto had come for Paula? How much more of this would he get away with? Raquel realized she was having trouble breathing. How much more of this could she take? Despite of her internal refusal, her eyes started to fill with tears. She felt so helpless against all of this, Alberto, the police, the six criminals on the other side of that wall, threatening to kill her if she told anyone about them, even Ángel, who was supposed to be her friend, not the jealous pursuer. When Raquel’s knees started to give way she couldn’t care less about holding her composure anymore. She led her body slip to the ground and buried her face in her hands, trying to calm down and refrain from hyperventilating.

As soon as the car had disappeared on the horizon, the door opened and the gang burst outside. Raquel didn’t even look up.

Suddenly there were arms reaching for her and voices talking over each other. Raquel couldn’t understand any of them. She felt like the space surrounding her was closing in around her, making her desperately gasp for air. The world seemed to swirl around and she had trouble recognizing where up and down was. Was this what a panic attack felt like? In a desperate attempt to just make it stop, Raquel closed her eyes. Then everything was quiet.

“Eh, inspectora!”

Someone was lightly slapping her cheek.

Raquel opened her eyes again to see Nairobi’s face right in front of her. She gasped for air.

“Are you alright?”, she said. “You were gone there for a second.”

Raquel looked around. She was still sitting on the floor and six faces were observing her from above.

She nodded and tried to sort herself.

“Come on”, Nairobi said. “You need some water.”

Together, Nairobi and Helsinki hoisted Raquel up to a standing position and helped her to get back inside. Her knees were about to give way again and Raquel was relieved when she found herself on the safety of a chair. Mónica came rushing over to her with a bottle of water in her hands that Raquel gratefully accepted. She drank almost the entire bottle while the others waited for her to recover.

“Better?”, Nairobi asked and Raquel nodded.

“Thanks”, she said and only now did she become aware of how sensitive this situation was. What should she say to them now after having had a panic attack in front of them?

It was quiet for a while and Raquel fumbled with the lid of her water bottle.

“Did you really visit him in prison?”, Tokyo asked.

Raquel hesitated. Then she nodded. “Yes. This morning.”

“Is he okay?”, Denver wanted to know.

Raquel shrugged. “How okay can you be when you’re in prison?”, she wondered and felt sorrow rise up in her chest again. “He’s not hurt or anything like that if that’s what you’re asking.”

Everybody remained silent.

Raquel took a deep breath. “I want to help you get him out”, she stated and all of them looked up in astonishment.

“Under one condition”, Raquel continued. “When you’re escaping when all of of this is over, I want to come with you. And you’ll help me to take my mother and my daughter with me.”

There was a pause where all of them simply stared at her, seemingly speechless.

Then Nairobi nodded. “Consider it done. Right guys?”

She looked at the others and all of them nodded. “Tokyo?”, Nairobi pressed on. “We’ll help her, right?”

Tokyo had been unusually quiet in the past minutes. She stared at Nairobi and let her gaze drift towards Raquel. “Yeah”, she said softly. “We’ll help you.”

Raquel had held her breath in anticipation. A huge weight was beginning to lift from her. If they acted cleverly, this could really work.

“Now you only need a gang name”, Nairobi said. “I can’t keep calling you inspectora for ever.”

Raquel chuckled.

“We’re all cities”, Rio explained.

“Alright”, Raquel said and thought about it for a second. “Lisboa.”

Nairobi smirked. “Perfect. Welcome to the gang, Lisboa.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SHAME ON ME for posting so late. I am sorry.

When Raquel woke the next morning she realized that this night had been the first night she had slept for more than five hours. She was still emotionally strained from everything but behind all the sorrow, the grief, the desperation, there was a glimpse of hope. She was nervous. But it was a good kind of nervous. For the first time, she didn’t feel as helpless as she had during the past two weeks. They had a plan.

The gang had trusted her enough to let her go and pick up Paula from school to make sure she was alright and drop her off at a friend’s house whose mother she trusted. When she returned to the warehouse they had been working on the plan for hours, until the early evening when Raquel had needed to go back to her family again. 

As it turned out, the professor’s gang members had already been eagerly working on a prison break strategy. It wasn’t half bad, Raquel had to admit. But it still would have failed. These people were fast thinkers with valuable abilities that equally reflected Sergio’s smart way of planning. Even though Raquel should have known he would have only picked the people most suited for the job, she found herself surprised at their _esprit de corps._ Breaking someone out of prison though was a whole different kind of job. Nairobi had been right. They needed Raquel’s experience in the force, her knowledge and her connections. And even with that, it would be difficult. Raquel had never worked in a prison, only sent people there. What she knew, she knew from protocols and colleagues. She prayed it would be enough.

Whilst the plan was almost finalized and she had already vaguely spoken to her mother about moving, Raquel had one big hurdle in front of her which she needed to take care of on her own. Telling her daughter. Telling her, that in one week from now, they would leave Madrid – illegally – and never return. That Paula would not see her friends again, her father, her school and her teachers. Raquel’s heart ached. How could she do that to her own daughter? How could she just rip her apart from the life she knew? But no matter how often she thought it through, which possibilities she considered, she saw no other way. If she wanted to keep her safe from Alberto, they needed to leave.

In the afternoon, when Paula had returned from school, Raquel knocked on Paula’s bedroom door.

“Cariño, what are you doing?”

Paula barely looked up from her desk. “I’m painting”, she answered in a concentrated voice.

Raquel closed the door behind her and proceeded to sit down on the bed next to the desk. “What are you painting?”

“The ocean”, Paula replied while adding the finishing touches to a blue wave that took up most of the sheet.

Raquel saw her chance. This was as good a moment as ever. “How would you like it if we went to actually see the ocean soon?”

For the first time, Paula looked up. Her eyes glowed. “Really?”

Raquel nodded.

“That would be so cool!”, Paula excitedly shifted on her chair. “Are you going to take your new boyfriend too?”

Raquel was taken aback for a second. “What makes you think that?”

“Well, he said that he kissed you and that that meant you were together now.”

Raquel couldn’t help but chuckle. “Yes, actually, Sergio will be there too. Is that okay with you?”

Paula thought about that for a second and then nodded. “Yes, he was nice.”

Raquel smiled and stroked Paula’s brown hair. “Good.”

“So it’s going to be like a real family holiday?”, Paula asked.

Raquel swallowed. Paula deserved the truth.

“Actually, corazón, it’s going to be longer than that.”

Paula squinted her eyes in an asking manner.

Raquel sighed inwardly and tried to put on an exciting face. “How would you feel about actually living at the beach, really close to the ocean?”

Paula paused for a second and thought about it with an analytical devotion that Raquel rarely saw from kids her age.

“I really like the beach”, Paula started.

Raquel nodded. “Me too.”

“But…”, Paula continued. “What about papá? Is he coming with us?”

Somewhere inside Raquel’s stomach that question stung. But Paula had every right to ask about her father and Raquel knew she had to be honest.

“No, cariño.”

“Why not?”, Paula asked.

Raquel took a deep breath. “Because papá and I are not together anymore.”

“But just because you and papá are not together anymore doesn’t mean that he and I shouldn’t spend time together anymore”, Paula protested.

“Paula”, Raquel was ringing for words. “I know papá loves you and he wants to spend as much time with you as possible but he is staying here in Madrid and when we move he simply won’t be able to spend as much time with you. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to.”

“But why do we have to move then?”

Raquel struggled with the answer. “Because I want to live with Sergio and we can’t do that in Madrid. Where we’ll be going we could be like a real family. And I would have so much more time for you.”

Paula considered that for a second.

“If papá can’t come with us, can I take my friends then?”, she asked.

“But what will their families say?”, Raquel answered. “They would miss them terribly.”

Paula’s face grew darker with the second.

“Why can’t I take my friends but you can take Sergio?”, she protested. “That’s not fair!”

“I’m sorry, cariño”, Raquel said. This was not going so well. “But that’s how it is right now. You will make tons of new friends”, she tried.

“No”, Paula burst out. “I want to stay here with papá and my friends and my teachers.”

“But wouldn’t you miss me then?”, Raquel tried to outsmart her.

“No”, Paula replied and got up from her chair. “You’re mean”, she cried. With that she ran out of the room and slammed the door on her way out.

Raquel laid back on the bed. How could she have thought that this conversation would have turned out any other way? Of course she was the mean witch in this narrative. How could she rip Paula away from all her friends, her father? And without having told her yet that she would probably not see any of them for a very long time, if ever, again? Raquel buried her face in her hands. What was she doing?

At the same time, she knew it wasn’t a possibility to sugar-coat this in order to have Paula on board. In the end, this was no place for negotiations. She had to have been honest with her. She had needed to know. She had deserved to know. Raquel hoped she would come around.

All day long, while Paula was angrily brooding in her room, Raquel found herself strolling through the house, unsure of what to do with herself. The plan was almost finalised, right now there was nothing more to do than wait for the big day. Normally, if she moved she would be packing right now. Arranging moving trucks, cancelling her phone and internet flat. All of that didn’t matter. She would leave the country illegally and there was no place for souvenirs of the past. The house would stay exactly like this until someone – probably her sister – decided what to do with all of her stuff. Raquel tried to steady her breathing. She was sure of her decision, she had not doubted it once. But this was still crazy.

She wandered the hallway trying to fill her mind with all of the good memories this house embodied – the bad ones she had decided to leave behind with her old life.

Besides the nervousness, there was another feeling shouting for attention inside Raquel’s body. She tried to push it away to keep her mind clear but after she woke up from one of her afternoon naps, which occurred far too often these days, she couldn’t help but let the sentiment in. She was missing Sergio. Missing him with all her heart and her body. Although she had merely spent five days with him, five days of getting to know him, his smell, that shy smile, the feeling of his beard grazing her cheeks – all of it had imprinted in her brain in no time at all. And she yearned for it now more than ever.

When she couldn’t take it any longer she took the phone and called Palacios. Maybe he would do her the favour. One mild discussion and twenty minutes later, Sergio’s voice came through the speaker.

“Sí?”

“Sergio?”

“Ehm, sí… Raquel?” He sounded baffled.

“Yes, it’s me.” She hesitated. “I hope it’s alright that I called.”

“Yes, claro que sí”, he assured her.

Both of them remained silent for a second and Raquel lay down staring at the side of the bed that Sergio had occupied two weeks ago.

“Is there any particular reason you called?”, he asked.

Raquel smiled to herself. “No.”

“Ah, so that’s why I was being called away from peacefully reading in my cell”, he joked.

She chuckled. “I can see, you’re very grateful that I went through the trouble of practically bribing my former colleague into giving me five minutes with you”, she said ironically.

Raquel could hear him breathe and imagined how a light smile started to spread on his face.

“Well… I miss you”, she said, more seriously now.

“I’m glad you called”, he said. “And I miss you too. I hope these words are enough consolation for your troubles.”

“I’ll think about it”, she joked. “What are you reading?”

“ _Terror_ ”, he responded.

Raquel laughed. That sounded about right. “So you’re sitting in jail, reading a legal drama? You do see the irony, don’t you?”

He laughed as well. “I do. But it’s about the grey areas in our justice system. It shows that not everything is set in stone. Sometimes justice by law doesn’t equal moral justice.”

“You’re right”, Raquel agreed. “It’s a good play.”

They were silent for a while.

“Would you still want to get away?”, Raquel finally asked the question to which she needed to hear the answer so desperately. “I mean, with me?”

“Yes. I wouldn’t need to think twice.”

Raquel smiled to herself like a little child and curled up on her bed.

“Good”, she simply replied.

“Why are you asking now?”

“I just needed to know”, she whispered.

In the background, Raquel could her another voice. The five minutes must be up.

“Raquel, I have to go now”, Sergio said.

“Alright”, she sighed. “See you soon.”

“Bye.”

Then a beeping sound announced the end of the call. Raquel stayed in bed like that for a while, clinging to her phone as if it was him in person.

As she wiped away a teardrop that had escaped her eye, a little creature suddenly appeared at the door. Paula stopped short at the sight of her mother crying.

“Mamá, are you alright?”, she asked and came crawling onto the bed.

“Yes, mi corazón”, she tried to reassure her but she knew it didn’t sound convincing.

In an instant, Paula tightly wrapped her arms around Raquel’s waist. “Maybe you need some chocolate”, she offered. “That always makes me feel better when I’m sad.”

And with that Raquel’s eyes started to tear up again and she could do nothing to stop it. The tears started flowing down her cheeks and immediately Raquel saw Paula’s eyes widen in terror. She had never seen her mother cry. Raquel had always been careful to not show her daughter her sorrows, she had only ever tried not to burden her with her problems. Retaining that was simply not possible right now.

“Mamá, qué pasa?”, Paula asked quietly and tried to dry her mother’s tears with her sleeve. “Please don’t cry!”

“I’m sorry, Paula”, Raquel sniffled, trying to calm down. A child shouldn’t have to see their mother cry.

“What is it?”, Paula asked again.

“Mamá is having a little bit of a hard time right now”, she explained honestly.

“Is it because of what I said?”, Paula asked with terror in her eyes.

“No cariño, no”, Raquel said quickly. “This is not your fault. Don’t ever think that.”

“But you do really want to live at that beach with Sergio, right?”, she carried on with an innocent voice.

“And with you. And abuela.” Raquel nodded and took Paula’s hand into hers.

“Abuela said there’s going to be so much that we can do. Like watching all the fish in the ocean and playing beach volleyball.”

“Well, she’s right”, Raquel confirmed.

Paula seemed to think about that for a while. “That does sound pretty cool.”

“So you want to come with me?”, Raquel asked, holding her breath.

After a second, Paula smiled. “Yes.” Then she paused. “But I am still also kind of sad to leave.”

“I know, cariño. You’re allowed to be. You can be happy and sad at the same time, you know?”

Paula sighed. “I guess. Are you happy and sad too, mamá?”

Raquel chuckled. “I think I am. But I am really happy that we will be together.”

Raquel made an attempt to catch Paula off guard and tickle her stomach and the two of them rolled around on the bed until the entire house was filled with laughter and giggling.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't manage to upload the chapter yesterday. It didn't really feel finished to me yet and I decided to work on it a bit more. But you'll still get two more chapters after this!
> 
> Also: While Raquel and the others might be really smart and now know a lot about prison breaks, I don’t. So please go easy on me if this isn’t all too realistic. I tried my best.

“Can we completely trust them with this?”, Nairobi whispered.

They were standing in the living room. Paula and Mariví sat on one side of the couch, drinking tea with the three big Serbians opposite them. Mónica and Nairobi had joined Raquel at the door.

“Yes”, Raquel nodded. “The only thing they know is that we’re moving, that we have to do it in secret and that they can’t tell anyone about it. I trust them.”

“Of course, they’re your family”, Nairobi replied and Raquel wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be an accusation of lacking judgement.

“And I am theirs. They realize how serious this is”, Raquel emphasised.

“Está bien”, Nairobi said softly and nodded to her.

The Serbians were here because they were entrusted with the task of bringing Paula and Mariví to the port. Paula had been a bit intimidated at the sight of these three tall and muscular men but they had turned out to be quite good with kids and the four of them were quickly involved in an enthusiastic talk about karate.

“Alright, we need to leave”, Nairobi said loudly. “Does everyone know what to do?”

All of them nodded quietly and Raquel took a moment to say goodbye to her mother and her daughter.

“Don’t forget your backpack, alright?”, she said to Paula and gave her a kiss on the forehead. Paula nodded. “Yes, mamá.”

Raquel dwelled in the sight of her daughter for a second. “See you later, vale?”

“Vale!”, Paula said with emphasis.

Nairobi was already waiting with the car and Raquel turned to leave the room when she saw Mónica still standing in the hallway. Raquel stopped. She had meant to talk to her alone but hadn’t had the chance to yet.

“Are you alright?”, she asked.

Mónica nodded, although she appeared a bit pale.

“How’s the baby doing?”

She seemed to be taken aback. They hadn’t talked about her pregnancy at all.

“The baby’s fine, I guess. It’s just that I get really sick in the mornings and I don’t know if it’s because I’m pregnant or simply really, really nervous”, she admitted.

“Are you okay with all this? Do you regret your decision?”

Mónica vehemently shook her head. “No.” Suddenly she smiled. “I am actually very excited to start a new life somewhere else.”

Raquel’s lips curled upwards. “Yes, me too.” Then she realized how similar their situations were. They were both leaving their former lives behind to start somewhere new and hopefully build a family. And by doing that both of them were becoming criminals for the first time.

Raquel placed a hand on Mónica’s shoulder. “The morning sickness is completely normal, trust me. It will pass soon.”

Mónica smiled gratefully.

“Plus, all of it will be worth it when you’re finally holding a little version of yourself in your arms”, said Nairobi who had just returned from the car.

Raquel raised her eyebrows in surprise. Nairobi had a child?

She smirked. “Are you girls coming now? There is a prison waiting for us to be turned upside down.”

Raquel and Mónica chuckled at Nairobi’s enthusiasm and together they entered the car and started driving. Raquel observed the house for the last time. This was it.

They met the others in an empty barn, only five kilometres away from the prison Sergio was detained in. Raquel was surprised at how comfortable she was with the group now. Of course there hadn’t been much time for social bonding, chatting or sharing secrets. But she thought she could assess everyone’s personality quite well already. Helsinki’s steady and reliable nature, Rio’s lightness, Denver’s humour, Mónica’s gentle soul and Nairobi’s enthusiasm. And even Tokyo with her chaotic instincts – she was willing to risk everything when she had set her mind to something. Raquel was sure she could trust these people. They had the same objective.

They stood in a circle, ready to start.

“Have you given the last instructions to Caimán?”, Raquel asked.

Denver nodded. As it turned out, his father had spent years in the same prison that Sergio was in now. Apparently one of the inmates had still owed him a favour and through a third party Denver had been able to make contact with him.

“Do you reckon the professor suspects anything by now?”, Rio asked.

“Not unless Caimán has mentioned something to him. But I made sure I didn’t give him too much information until about an hour ago.”

Raquel pursed her lips. It would all be so much easier if Sergio knew they were coming for him. But they hadn’t found a way to contact him without the risk of having anybody else listening in. In this case, Caimán, who seemed to be the established ruler in this prison and knew his ways to communicate with the outside world, was the safer option. Raquel just hoped he didn’t turn on them.

“Don’t worry”, Denver said. Apparently he had seen the concern in her face. “Caimán owes my father. He saved his life.”

Raquel nodded. They had to work with that.

And thus, the prison break began.

Rio und Mónica took their place in a truck that the Serbians had procured. Rio’s job was to work from the outside, using his hacking skills to eliminate every hurdle that would come into their way. Mónica would support and cover him. She was pregnant and her gunshot wound still hadn’t healed completely. She was not in any place to be part of the action right now.

Nairobi and Denver took the car and Raquel watched them drive off. They would take place at the prison’s parking deck, holding the getaway car for Sergio. Tokyo curtly said her goodbyes and set off with the motorbike. She would be their outside joker.

Raquel and Helsinki took another car and drove in the same direction. At the prison’s entrance they parted ways. Raquel observed Helsinki entering the prison disguised as a craftsman. Finding out the schedule for repair work and cancelling with the company had been one of the easier things included in the plan. Helsinki would be one of their inside men. Raquel would be the other.

She took a deep breath, got out of the car and entered the prison’s entrance hall. To her relief, the person she was looking for, was quickly to be found.

“Raquel”, Palacios greeted her with a smile. “There aren’t any visiting hours today, you know that, right?”

Raquel smiled at Palacios. She had known him since the first semester in the academy and he had only ever been nice to her. Even now he didn’t question that she wanted to visit a criminal in prison. She almost felt bad that she had to betray him.

“I know”, she replied. “I actually just came to thank you…” She suspiciously looked around. “You know… for the phone call a few days ago.”

Palacios turned slightly red. “Oh, that. You’re welcome”, he said.

“I brought cookies”, Raquel exclaimed and held up a Tupperware box.

“I’m on my break right now”, Palacios said. “Why don’t you come upstairs with me? You’ve driven this far.”

“Sure”, Raquel replied and together they went to the break room, deeper into the heart of the prison. She was in.

They sat together for a while, chatting. Raquel was getting more nervous by the second but Palacios didn’t seem to notice her change of behaviour. He was carelessly eating away the cookies that Raquel had brought him, and in an inattentive moment, Raquel reached out and grabbed the key card that he had put on the table. He didn’t notice.

“Can I use the bathroom?”, she asked.

“Sure. Second door on the right”, Palacio explained.

Raquel nodded gratefully and made sure to hide the card in her sleeve as she left the room. She went into the bathrooms and put on her in-ear device.

“Can you hear me?”, she whispered.

“Positive”, came Rio’s voice back to her.

“We’re in. I have the card”, Raquel said.

One second later, a shrill alarm filled the building.

_“Why do we need Caimán again?”, Rio asked._

_“Because”, Raquel replied, “according to Denver he is in possession of an electronic card that gives him access to some of the restricted areas in the prison. He can help get Sergio out – at least part of the way.”_

_“We’ll have to make sure that the coast is clear for them though”, Denver said._

_Nairobi put one hand on Rio’s shoulder. “And that’s were you come in. We’ll hack into their security system and fake an alarm. An alarm that seems legit and will draw their eyes on a totally different part of the building. The guards will be occupied with securing the cells and finding out the source of the alarm. But the alarm won’t inform the police. They’ll think the prison is automatically going into lockdown when actually, we’re taking it apart bit by bit.”_

_“Why don’t we just hack all the doors open in the first place?”, Tokyo asked._

_Raquel shook her head. “That’s most likely impossible. Rio can open the way in and out of the parking deck for Nairobi and Denver. But most of the doors inside the prison need to be opened with a key card that is directly placed at the lock. That’s why we need Caimán. And that’s why Helsinki and I are going in as well.”_

Raquel ripped open her bag and procured a guard uniform. That would give her the authority to move freely inside the building. Then she stopped two minutes on the clock. If everything went according to plan, most of the guards would abandon their posts and move to the northern part of the building where the alarm was supposedly coming from. In turn, Raquel and Helsinki would go into the opposite direction. Rio and Mónica would watch the surveillance cameras and direct them through the building. If necessary, Rio would have to put them out one by one in order to cover up where Sergio and Caimán were. It was a precarious mission. But they had no other choice.

As Raquel stepped into the hallway again, it was empty. Quickly she went towards the southern part of the building. As she turned a corner she passed Helsinki, who had also changed into a guard uniform, and together they made their way through the building. The alarm was still ringing and Raquel felt on edge the entire time. Within the past two weeks she had memorized every inch of this prison but she still feared they would encounter unplanned obstacles. The key card seemed to work though and with every door they opened they came one step closer to Sergio.

“One more door, Lisboa”, Rio said. “Then you should meet the professor.”

“Understood”, she reported back and they moved forward more quickly now.

“Mierda, there is a guard!”, Rio said in panic. “Behind the door you just came through.”

Helsinki and Raquel quickly exchanged a glance. “You go and divert him, I’ll get Sergio”, Raquel whispered. Helsinki nodded and turned around.

Raquel passed the next corner and she saw Sergio, his back turned to her, from a distance. Her heart jumped. Caimán had kept his promise. Then she heard Rio’s voice again.

“A guard is approaching from the opposite side! Hide!”

Shit. Would this blow up after all?


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The plan is to post the final chapter sometime tomorrow. But considering that part 4 is coming out in 9 hours from now, I can't promise anything ... :p I will try my best and I wish you all the most amazing time watching the new episodes :)

It had started at noon. Caimán had behaved untypically during lunch. He had constantly searched for Sergio’s proximity, pulling little jokes and searching for his eye contact. He had been subtle, but Sergio had noticed. What had that guy planned with him? Sergio wasn’t particularly keen to play the part of his new carrier pigeon and smuggle drugs.

After lunch, Sergio had lost sight of Caimán and started to hope he was bored of stalking him now. It turned out to be the contrary.

In the afternoon, when everyone had free time, Sergio sat in his cell, reading. Suddenly Caimán appeared at the door.

“Professor”, he teased. “Come with me.”

Sergio hesitantly laid his book on the bed beside him. “Why?”

“Are you coming or do I have to drag you out of your cell myself?”, Caimán countered. He didn’t seem pleased. What was happening? And where were his minions?

Sergio fixed his glasses and got up. There was no point in resisting Caimán.

He followed him through the cell block, past the kitchen und the bathrooms, until they entered a corridor that only led to one other door. A door that was always looked and only the guards could access.

“What are you planning?”, Sergio asked him. He didn’t feel safe alone with Caimán in this corridor. He almost definitely wouldn’t be able to take him if he tried something and who knew when the guards caught wind of the situation.

“Shut up”, Caimán said and leaned against the wall, apparently waiting for something.

“You know, I had an acquaintance in this prison once. Didn’t particularly like him”, Caimán said and turned up his nose, apparently at the thought of mentioned acquaintance. Why was he telling him this?

“His name was Augustín Ramos.”

Sergio’s eyebrows shot up.

“You might know him as Moscow.”

Sergio swallowed. Then he nodded.

“I owe him a favour, so today I am not here to screw you over.” He spat on the floor and let out a dry laugh. “As much as I want to.”

Sergio didn’t know what to reply and Caimán jokingly poked his shoulder. “You’re going home today”, he announced.

“What?”, Sergio hissed but he never got to hear Caimán’s reply. Suddenly, a shrill alarm began to ring through the entire building.

“Come on”, Caimán said, took Sergio by his arm und drew out what appeared to be a key card out of his trousers. Without hesitation Caimán went to the door and unlocked it. As he wanted to push Sergio through it, he hesitated. Aside from the alarm, he could hear the guards yell in the cellblock behind him. “Everybody, into their cells!”

If they got caught, this wouldn’t end well.

“Move”, Caimán interrupted his thoughts. “Denver says to tell you that you should regard this as an alternative _Plan Paris_.”

Sergio looked at Caimán with his eyes wide open. _Plan Paris._ That had been an escape plan that would have come into effect if escaping through the tunnel had somehow failed. Only the gang knew about it.

“Come on”, Caimán pressed on and this time, Sergio followed him immediately. The door closed behind them and the guards’ shouting disappeared. Only the alarm reminded them to keep moving fast.

Apparently, this wasn’t the first time that Caimán had to navigate through the restricted areas of this prison. He seemed to know all the paths inside this labyrinth and quickly they created a big distance to the cell block. Sergio didn’t dare to question what was happening. The gang was going to get him out. But why didn’t they tell him first? He hoped their plan would work.

After the third door, Caimán stopped. “You’re on your own now. Second door to the right. Wait there.”

With that he left.

Sergio swallowed. He paced down the corridor and tried the mentioned door. It was open. Behind it was another corridor. Here, aside from the alarm, it seemed quiet. No one was there. No guard, but also no one from the gang that was supposed to help him. He stood there for a second, unsure of what to do next. Then he heard footsteps. Oh no. Without the key card he wouldn’t be able to make his way back to the cell block.

Facing the door where the sound came from he went backwards, his fists slightly raised, but who was he kidding? If a guard came, this was it. Sergio took another step back when suddenly someone forcefully grabbed him from behind, covered his mouth with their hand and dragged him through a door that Sergio hadn’t noticed before. It all went so fast and before Sergio could react in any way, the door had closed and he found himself trapped inside a storage room, facing the wall. Slowly his attacker lowered their hand from Sergio’s mouth and forced him to turn around.

He couldn’t believe his eyes.

“Raquel, wh-“, he started.

“Pssst”, she hissed and covered his mouth with her hand again while putting her index finger on her own lips. Outside, the footsteps seemed to come closer now and Raquel procured a gun from her pocket. She appeared ready to step in the way of anyone who would dare to open this door.

Inside of his brain Sergio had so many questions burning to be asked. But as he looked into her eyes that radiated so much warmth and confidence, he felt his breathing slow down. He could trust her. She was going to get him out of here.

The footsteps had become even louder now and Sergio could almost sense somebody standing on the opposite side of the door. At the same time, he realized just how close the tiny storage room forced their bodies together. If he moved his head just one inch forward, he would be able to kiss her. Sergio was shocked that even now he apparently couldn’t think of anything better to do.

Outside, the person seemed to carry on and the sound of footsteps started to fade.

Both of them breathed out in relief and Sergio noticed only then just how tense he had been in the past minute.

“Come on”, Raquel whispered and opened the door to the corridor, her gun raised. She took one reassuring look to Sergio and motioned him to follow her. They rushed through the building and when Raquel opened the last door with a key card, bright sunlight hit Sergio’s eyes. Judging from the cars that were parked here, they were on the prison’s parking deck. Raquel grabbed Sergio’s arm and led him through the labyrinth of cars until they turned a corner and saw Helsinki at gunpoint with another guard. In one quick motion, Raquel pushed Sergio behind her and held up her gun.

“Don’t move”, she said to draw the guard’s attention to her. “It’s two against one. I don’t think I have to explain this to you.”

The guard’s expression faltered but she didn’t drop her weapon.

“Nairobi, Denver”, Raquel whispered and Sergio realized she must be wearing an in-ear communication device. “We need support here. A guard. Bring the handcuffs.”

The three of them kept on circling around on the parking deck. The guard was clearly not willing to give up yet but she also didn’t dare to pick up her walkie-talkie. Then Nairobi and Denver appeared, their guns raised.

“Lay down you gun”, Raquel commanded again. The guard turned around to see two more people close in on her and finally surrendered, carefully placing her weapon on the concrete.

“Handcuff her to that pillar and take her communication devices away”, Raquel ordered and Denver quickly followed suit.

Raquel turned around to Sergio again. They set in motion one more time. At the far end of the parking deck was a blue polo and the five of them squeezed inside, Denver and Helsinki in the front, Sergio in the middle seat of the rear bench.

“Rio”, Raquel said, as Nairobi had closed the last door. “Open the gate for us.”

From there, everything went smoothly. To not draw attention to themselves, they drove in an average tempo until they passed the gate. No one dared to say anything. But then the prison got smaller and smaller behind them until they finally made a turn and the building was nowhere to be seen anymore. Nairobi let out a huge breath that she must have been holding for the past five minutes.

“Holy shit”, she screamed.

Sergio saw Raquel turn around beside him, making sure no one was following them.

“Did we actually just do that?”, she said breathlessly.

“Hell yeah”, Nairobi screamed and nudged Sergio with her fist. “Professor, yellow really doesn’t suit you”, she teased. “But I am so glad we have you back!”

With that she wrapped her arms around him and for the first time Sergio dared to let somewhat of a smile spread on his face.

“But what… How?”, he stuttered as Nairobi released him.

“We’ll explain later”, Nairobi said. “Enjoy it for now.”

Sergio shook his head in awe and turned to Raquel again.

“I’m really glad to have you back too”, she whispered and the warmest, gentlest smile spread on her face.

Instinctively his hand reached for hers and their fingers intertwined as if it was the most natural thing in the world. He simply couldn’t believe what had just happened.

Five minutes later, they stopped at a barn and everyone got out of the car. There was a different truck waiting for them and they hurried towards it.

“Where is Tokyo?”, Raquel shouted.

“On her way”, said Rio who had just stepped out of the truck. They were really all here.

Nairobi pointed in the distance. “There she is”, she said. “Thank god.”

The others made to get into the vehicle and Helsinki took the driver’s seat. Suddenly, Raquel grabbed Sergio’s arm and dragged him around the corner of the truck.

“What are you –“, he started but she silenced him immediately because she leaned in closer and gave him a kiss that almost pulled him off his feet. He returned the kiss and let himself fall completely. How did he deserve this?

When she let go of him, a huge grin spread on her face. “I just really needed to do this before we got into the truck.”

“I really needed this as well”, he replied, smiling at her. “But where are we going, Raquel?” His thoughts were all over the place.

She laughed. “Where do you think we’re going, you idiot?”

“For real? You’re coming with me? To Palawan?”

She smiled. “Yes”, she said and his heart filled with endless joy.

When Tokyo arrived they set in motion again and entered the truck. Then they started driving.

Finally, Sergio couldn’t take it any longer.

“What the hell is going on?”, he shouted.

Denver laughed. “Calm down, professor.”

“How? When?”, Sergio stuttered. “You guys and… and Raquel? How?”

Nairobi giggled. “Her name’s Lisboa now, actually”, she corrected him.

Sergio turned to Raquel. “You’re crazy”, he only got out.

“Maybe a little”, she admitted and squeezed his hand.

“But, really”, Sergio proceeded. He needed to know everything. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“There was no way”, Raquel replied. “Calling wouldn’t have been safe enough and we didn’t know how to get information to you otherwise. You’re not exactly the leader of that prison. So we used Caimán.”

Sergio shook his head. “A warning would have been nice. I thought the guy wanted to beat me up!”

“Sorry”, Raquel said but it only seemed half honest.

“How did you even know he was going to help you? Or not use the chance and escape with us?”

“He knew my dad”, Denver chimed in. “He owed him a huge favour for saving his life and we made use of that in his name. Caimán holds his promises. Besides, he has only one year left in prison and wants to go back to his family after that. He wouldn’t have wanted to escape with us.”

Sergio sat there, stunned.

“I’m sorry about your father, Denver”, Sergio said.

Everybody was quiet for a second.

Denver nodded and his hand searched for the person next to him. Only now Sergio realized there was another addition to the gang.

“Professor, this is Estocolmo.”

The woman on his right, she had blonde, curly hair, nodded shyly. Mónica Gaztambide.

“Encantado”, Sergio said.

When they were close to the port Rio gasped. “Guys”, he said and held up his hand. “Listen to this, they’re talking about us on the radio.”

He turned up the volume on an old radio device.

_“…who seemed to have been the same people participating in the robbery at the Royal Mint only three weeks ago. All of them managed to escape and the police is currently working on detaining the fugitives. Police are also investigating an explosion that took place at the same prison facility during the escape which stands likely in connection to the case and was implemented to be a distraction. No citizens were harmed by the explosion. We are expecting further information soon.”_

All heads turned to Tokyo.

“Tokyo”, Nairobi said with a suspicious expression. “Did you fire those explosives without consulting us?”

Tokyo smirked and shrugged. “I had nothing to do! I figured better a fiery distraction than no distraction.”

All of them groaned. This was typical. There was never no chaos with Tokyo. Sergio shook his head. This was a crazy, crazy day.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So much for posting every day ... Sorry it took me so long to write this short epilogue. Part 4 really messed with my feelings and I really couldn't bring myself to write anything. I hope you enjoy this! 
> 
> Thank you so much to everybody who read and followed this fic, everyone who gave Kudos and all of you who have left all these lovely comments. Even though I didn't reply to the comments this time, your words and opinions really mean a lot to me. Thank you so much! :)

_Palawan, 1 year later._

“Sergio, Sergio, come play with me and abuela!”

The high-pitched voice found its way from the shore to the terrace.

Raquel sighed and slightly shifted her position in the hammock. Sergio reluctantly lifted himself from her but Raquel grabbed his bare upper body and pulled him back down so their naked skin could touch again.

“No, not yet”, she whispered against his ear and he chuckled.

“Calm down”, he said and once again lifted himself up despite Raquel’s attempts to pull him towards her. “Paula, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes”, he called to the shore.

Raquel groaned. “You always give in so easily.”

She took him by his neck and this time Sergio didn’t resist her grip and lowered himself on her body again.

“Do I sense some jealousy?” he teased and a smirk began to form on his lips. Raquel was just about to protest but then she stopped herself. The way the sunlight illuminated his brown eyes, the way the wind made his hair slightly messy, the way he looked at her. Unexpectedly a wave of pure felicity overcame her, washed away all other thoughts and filled her with a tinge of drunken contentment. There was a sudden intensity to this instant that made her feel the nostalgia of the moment before it had even come to an end. She wanted to capture this moment and frame it or catch it and put it into an empty marmalade jar to store it for darker times.

“Why are you staring at me like this?”, Sergio asked and watched her with a curious expression.

Raquel indulged in the view for another few seconds before replying.

“It almost wouldn’t have ended this way”, she said softly. “Can you imagine?”

Sergio’s eyes skimmed the horizon, as if he was looking for something in the distance. “Me still in prison?”, he asked. “I don’t want to imagine that scenario for even a second.”

“Me neither. Yellow really doesn’t suit you.”

Sergio rolled his eyes at her and she burst out laughing, knowing that she had managed to mess with him.

“Why are you suddenly thinking about this?”, he asked, more serious now and put a strain of Raquel’s hair behind her ear. It tickled.

Raquel shrugged. “It’s been exactly one year. I saw an article on it today.”

“Mh.” Sergio gently let his finger tips move up and down her collarbone. “What did it say?”

Raquel sighed. “Crime of the century or epic love story?”, she quoted the article’s headline in the far too excited voice of a news anchor. “They’re calling you the criminal mastermind and me the naïve lamb that ran straight into your trap.”

Sergio chuckled but then he realized that Raquel had turned more pensive.

He lifted himself up so he could properly look her in the face. “Does it bother you?”

She shook her head but he raised his eyebrows and she gave in.

“Alright”, she admitted. “Maybe it bothers me a little.”

He looked at her with a thoughtful expression.

“But that doesn’t change the fact that I wouldn’t want to do anything else than be here with you right now”, she added.

He smiled and leaned towards her again. He started to kiss her naked skin all the way from her collarbone to her lips and back down again.

“More”, she demanded and he was happy to fulfil that request.

He proceeded to draw a trace of kisses from her neck to her breasts and she let out a soft moan. His hands urged to touch her, feel her naked skin beneath them and rip off that thin bikini top she was wearing but he knew they didn’t have the time. There was a nine-year-old bundle of energy demanding their attention.

“Treasure this moment while it lasts”, Sergio said, already anticipating the disruption.

Raquel only replied with a content sigh. She had her eyes closed but from the corner of his eyes Sergio could see something moving. Three… two… one…

“Time’s up!”, Paula called and one second later the hammock was shaken so abruptly that both Raquel and Sergio would have almost fallen on the ground. 

Raquel opened her eyes and saw his face, his eyebrows raised, almost as if he was asking for permission to play with her daughter.

“You go”, Raquel laughed and she watched as the two of them made their way towards the shore again. She lay back into the hammock and soon she could hear them giggling about some sea monsters that Sergio had made up. Raquel closed her eyes and let the sun warm her face. There was no place she would rather be.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm happy about Kudos and comments :)


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